It is canning season! Marmalades,chutney,pickles,ketchup etc. Till now, I have only made apricot jam. Our family loves it. It is pretty simple thing to do. Chop your apricots,add sugar and boil.You can spice your jam or mix it with other fruits.

Here is a very good blog, about how to make marmalade, from High Heel Gourmet.So I will not start to explain in detail, how you make marmalade. Have a look:

Basic Jam for Beginners, All Natural, Low Sugar, No Pectin Added

Some people boil their jars after filling them, but this is much faster way to achieve same effect.Turn your jars upside down for about 15 minutes and then turn them back up.They will vacuum themselves automatically. It is quite confusing and funny,to hear the: pop-pop-blob-pop ; first time when jars are pulling the lids down and vacuuming.

I like to decorate my jars and to make fancy labels on them. Same thing with serving desserts from mason jars or soup from the bottle. This is how last weeks Wine Club dinner appetizer looked like.

I used brown baking paper as liner for pizza and in the bottle was Gazpacho soup.

When you decorate your jars or bottle they  are ready gifts to give away. Not any extra wrapping needed. And decorated marmalade jars just look lovely on your breakfast table. You do not need much materials in order to do this.

This is what you will need:

Ribbon,muffin/cupcake liners, glue and paper bags. I found these nice striped paper bags from store, which sells all kind of decoration things.You can use old newspaper or brown lunch bags.. Or if you have old gift wrapping paper laying around, use that!

Cut the bottom away from the bag and slip it over the jar. Measure your bag so that it fits tightly around your jar.You might need to adjust the size of the bag according your jars. I was lucky, and I did not need to start to cut anything else except the glued bottom and little from the top away. Actually, I got two small jar covers from on paper bag. Use bit clue to secure that the paper bag stays put on a jar.

Next thing is to print the labels and cut them out.You will find labeling cite here. It is free to print site, and they have beer bottle labels too.

http://www.jamlabelizer.com/

I chose for the top round and for the side square design. Print and cut..

Next thing is to clue muffin liner on the marmalade jar lid. Use one or two of them to do this.As you wish. After finishing with glueing muffin liners on the lids I glued the round label on top, and some ribbon around the jar lid.

Last thing is to glue the label on the side of the jar, and maybe add some gift tags. Just use your own imagination, and materials which you have around.

This is how my project turned out to be. Quite nice.. Have a nice jar project and enjoy!