How to Make a Halloween Potions Centerpiece & Free Printable Potions Jar Labels
Create a slightly spooky Halloween centerpiece with many items you have around your house! Learn how to make Halloween potion jars in this easy-to-follow tutorial.
I love to go all out for Halloween. I decorate the front porch, the dining room, and every little nook and cranny around the house that I can find.
A few years, I purchased a set of vintage beakers and chemistry jars at an antique store. I thought it would be nice to add a set of “potions” to go with the jars.
Today I’m going to show you an effortless way to decorate a set of glass jars to create a potions centerpiece. For a bit of extra fun, if you’re a Harry Potter fan, you can pretend that Professor Snape is yelling at you the whole time you’re concocting your potions!
Creating the centerpiece was easy. I simply filled the glass bottles with things I had at home (salt, water with food coloring, feathers, rice & some lichen). Then decorated the outside of the bottles.
Potions Centerpiece Supplies
- Small Glass Jars in a Variety of Sizes
- Food Coloring (I used red, but purple would also work well)
- Rice, beans, Spanish moss (anything that looks “spooky” to fill the jars)
- A set of alphabet stamps
- Various “findings” I love the Tim Holtz Brand for projects like this
- Distress Ink
- Wire
- Twine
- Free Potions Label Printable (download on our site using the directions below)
How to Make Halloween Potions Jars
These jars are very simple to make, and a lot of the construction steps are just personal preferences.
Step One: Create the Labels
Print off the label sheet from our blog, OR use a piece of plain cardstock to cut out rectangles that fit your jars.
Tip: Did you know that you can adjust the size of the labels printed in Adobe Acrobat? Simply change the page scaling down until you get labels the size you want.
If you are creating the labels using stamps, stamp out the letters on your pieces of cardstock.
Here are a few suggestions for potion jar labels:
- Poison
- Wolfsbane
- Bat Wing
- Venom
- Boomslang
- Acid
- Eye of Newt
- Toadstools
- Dragon Blood
- Ginger
- Sage
Step Two: Attach the Labels to the Jars
After you have printed or created the labels, distress the edges with a bit of distress ink. You can use a makeup sponge or just drag the edge of the label through the ink pad.
Use a bit of double-sided tape to attach the labels to the sides of the jars.
Step Three: Embellish
Using your “findings & ephemera”, twine and wire attach various elements to the jars. I used a lot of googley eyes on my jars.
Just twist the wire around the jars and add other elements as you like.
Step Four: Fill Jars
Fill the jars with items from around your house. You can fill jars with water and tint it with food coloring.
Rice and salt also work well as jar fillers, as do black beans and dried herbs.
That’s it! Now just arrange it on a cake plate or tray in the center of your table!
I’ve still got two Halloween quilts to finish! One is getting basted tomorrow, so it will be done soon. Yikes. Then it’s time to gear up for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
I still want to make some things for Halloween. I’ve been too busy lately unfortunately.
My latest and next projects are the same – sewing lots of little girls’ clothing for my very first craft fair!
I need to machine embroider my Christmas cards. I have already bought the designs and now need to buy the stiff felt and get busy!
First up is to finish the striaght line quilting on a full sized quilt for my son. Once that is done I will start sewing together blocks for a lap quilt to use in the car. Thanks for the chance at your giveaway.
Next on my list is to look over the list I made last year and get started on some of the projects I thought would have been perfect if i’d had the time. Right now, I still have the time…right?
Time to wrap up some sewing projects and I would like to start on a Christmas table runner.
I need to make a pumpkin costume for my son, then it’s on to Christmas crafting!
Next on my list is to make two fabric flower necklaces as Christmas gifts for my grandnieces.
I’m looking forward to an applique turkey table topper I have a pattern for. Thanks for the chance to win.
I’m doing some knitting now. I love the ruffled scarves I’m making from Sashay yarn!
Hot pads for Christmas gifts.
Just today I offered to help a friend make a Halloween costume for her son. Given the late start this project has jumped to the top of my list. The other projects — pillow covers, Christmas gifts, etc. — will have to wait a bit.
My next project is a chistmas quilt,Thanks for the coupon, I can always use another one of those.
My next project is a table cloth or table runner to decorate for winter. I plan to use a lot of blues and silvers. or gold and burgandy. I won’t decide on a color scheme until I go shopping for fabric.
Very cool arrangement. My next project is a table runner for my MIL birthday and then maybe a table runner for us.
OMG … I LOVE what you did with those bottles. They are wicked…, creepy…, and beautiful !! You did a wonderful job with it.
I’m now working on a halloween quilt with 31 different blocks which are posted by a halloween blog hop. It is so much fun to make them and I just LOVE Halloween !!!
I’ve got the pattern traced to make myself a skirt, but I need to cut the fabric and actually make it!