What do you do when it’s the Wednesday before Mother’s Day and you haven’t figured out what your class of kinders are doing for their moms?  You use your planning time to scour Pinterest in hopes of some divine inspiration.  At least that’s what I did.  

I kind of had an idea that I wanted to do something with Mason Jars.  Did you know there is an entire website devoted to Mason Jar gifts?  No lie!  You can check it out HERE!  I didn’t get past the first 4 or 5 ideas before I had to stop myself.  I knew I would get sucked into looking at Mason Jars and my planning time would be gone if I strayed from my objective.

I finally came across this sweet little gem from YesterdayOnTuesday .  I really wanted to plant flowers and make the wire handle, but who was I kidding?  These are kinders we’re talking about!  I would end up making 25 wire handles, flowers would need to be purchased, and then I could just see all these little plants getting dumped on their way home.

So I revised my thinking.  I still loved the Mason Jars, but I thought, ‘wouldn’t it be sweet to make a little thumb print heart candle holder instead?’  It’s simple, quick and I think moms would love it.

To get the paint to stay, I picked up some enamel craft paints specifically for glass.  It has a little wine glass emblem on the top of the lid if you’re looking for them.

You can find them at any craft store or on Amazon.  I actually picked mine up at Walmart for about $1.50 each. 

Then I picked up some no brand, small canning jars at the same time.  Now even though Mason makes some sweet little jars, the Walmart brand, cheapest ones you can get, are the best because there isn’t a raised logo on them.  I think I paid about $14.00 for 24 jars.

It’s a takes a bit of practice, but I think we were able to get the heart prints accomplished with little effort.  Some thumbs make cuter hearts than others, but in general, what’s not to love about a heart thumbprint?

Once the hearts were done, it was just a matter of packaging.  I had seen this sweet tag from Unoriginalmom on Pinterest and knew I wanted to do something similar for the tags.

I found a free Mason Jar template from Sweetly Scrapped, and was able to come up with something like this.   I had each of my little finger printers sign their names to the back.  I didn’t have any colored cute twine, but I think the regular was fine.  I also did not use my Silhouette to cut the hearts out.  Luckily, I had a heart paper punch just the right size.  Whew!

All in all, I don’t think they turned out too shabby.

We hot glued a little candle to the bottom, another Walmart purchase of 100 for about $4.00, and there you have it.  Our quick, simple and relatively inexpensive Mother’s Day gifts.  

Here’s a general break-down of my costs:

Jars:  $14.00

Paint: $6.00

Candles: $4.00

Twine: I had on hand

Tags:  Made myself with paper I already had

Hot-glue:  Already had it.

Tissue paper for wrapping:  Had on hand

Small white paper bags:  Had on hand.

Total cost for this teacher:  $24.00  That’s about a $1.00 a kid, but the best part is, minus the jars, I have everything I need to make the same gift next year.  Woohoo.  So my cost next year will be almost half.  And with a little fore thought, I am going to start scouring the local thrift shops to see if I can come up with some second hand jars that will work just as well.

If you’d like to make this simple craft for your own students’ Mother’s Day project.  I have a free set of tags for you to use.  Just click on the picture below if you’d like it.

And Happy Mother’s Day!