Throw a stick just about anywhere these days, and you’re liable to hit a Mason jar.
Hipsters drink from them. Restaurants set tables with them. And, of course, gardeners use them to preserve the season’s harvest. Amanda Walton turns them into wall-hanging vases.
Walton, who lives in Standish, gathers wooden pallets tossed away by businesses and uses the wood to create a mount or shelf for the jars. She strips the wood, paints it with non-toxic paint and distresses it in her home woodworking shop near Sebago Lake. Then she adds the glass mason jars.
Some of the jars are clear glass, others are painted with chalk paint in colors such as ocean blue, coral peach, white and yellow. (The painted jars are not dishwasher safe.)
Walton said the people who buy her jars use them for flower bouquets, as planters for herbs and other plants, as toothbrush holders and art organizers.
She also makes beautiful shelves that can be used to display the mason jars, hold wine bottles or bottles of olive oil.
Walton’s business is called Revamped and Revived. She sells the hanging jars and her other handmade products only through her Etsy.com shop.
The jars vary in price, starting at $18 and going up to $48 for a set of three.
Walton will exhibit a range of her work in October at a contemporary folk art show at the WREN Gallery in Bethlehem, New Hampshire. WREN stands for Women’s Rural Entrepreneurial Network.
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