Get your Halloween decorating started by making your own spooky apothecary jars for Halloween with these FREE printable labels.
I have a confession.
I am a hoarder of glass bottles–any size, any color, any shape. Seriously, there is an entire cabinet in our kitchen dedicated to my hoards. When you are a hoarder of glass bottles, all that goes through your head are the endless possibilities of what new life those bottles could take on.
A few weeks ago my husband couldn’t take it any longer and asked me if I was finally going to do something with them, if not he was going to throw them out. My little heart sank, knowing that impending doom was coming to my hoards if my creative mind couldn’t come up with something to make them into.
Finally the thought hit me! I know everyone has seen the cute (or creepy) apothecary jars floating around on Pinterest for Halloween. I am not big on decorating for Halloween, but once the idea of apothecary jars was in my head I couldn’t imagine some of those bottles being used for anything else.
My husband is a whiskey drinker, and I have been saving bottles for the last 2 years. I also save wine bottles because, well, wine bottles. I used a few whiskey bottles, a wine bottle, a few bottles I used as decoration at our wedding reception, and a bottle I bought at Dollar Tree a few months ago.
Luckily I also hoard wine corks, so I had plenty of bottle stoppers to choose from.
How to Make Apothecary Jars
What you’ll need:
- Old bottles, or THESE work really well
- Cork stoppers
- Food coloring
- Cornstarch
- Paper
- Double Sided Tape
- Printer and Paper
- Scissors
First you will want to wash the bottles really well, remove any labels, and let them dry completely.
While the bottles dried after being washed and stripped of their labels, I went to PicMonkey to create my new apothecary jar labels. I wrote a tutorial If you want to learn how to make your own poison labels, or you can download these by clicking HERE.
Next, I printed out the labels, and using double sided tape, adhered them to the bottles. I like the double sided tape because in my experience it comes off cleaner then using glue.
I filled the jars with different levels of water, and added food coloring to them for effect. I even added cornstarch to some for a cloudy, turbid effect.
There you have it! How to make your own apothecary jars. My husband got his wish of using up my hoards, and I got to be a little creative in the process. I’d say that’s a win for the both of us.
What items do you hoard in your home?
Check out these other Halloween DIY ideas:
Very good! Thanks for the printable. Would love to have you link up to Idea Box tomorrow!
Love the labels, I need to make these!
Thank you Valerie! They were so easy.
Hey Amanda I saw these and hoped they were on the Spooktacular Party! Love them! Great printables! Stopping by to let you know you were my feature pick for the Halloween Spooktacular party! Sharing to day on social media! Have a great weekend!
Kim
Thank you so much for featuring them Kim! Hope your weekend is wonderful.
I did something similar but because my kids love to pick up and admire decorative items, I used colored glass paint on the inside of the bottles (Just roll them to evenly coat the inside at whatever height you want your liquid to end up at, and repeat as necessary until the paint is dry). Same effect, no spills to clean up. And it looks great in my ‘Mad Scientist’ display.
These are so awesome! Just the right amount of spooky 🙂
I just linked to them on my latest post ~ https://www.thepaperycraftery.com/the-crafty-life/my-autumn-dollar-tree-haul/
Thanks so much!
Thank you Meredith!
These would be perfect to display for a Halloween party! Sharing on FB & Twitter!
Amanda, these are great! Your printable labels are perfect! I don’t do lots of decorating for Halloween either, but these would look great on display at our Halloween party. Pinned.
Thank you Beverly!
Your labels look FANTASTIC!!
But….. THEY must’ve updated the app bc I Can’t use any of the directions you posted.
I don’t see themes or anything. Plz help 🙁
Hi Jessica. Sorry for the trouble, but yes PicMonkey recently (within the last month) updated their app. You have to set up an account with them now to use the new features. I explained more in the tutorial for the labels themselves. Good news is that you can still download these exact ones for FREE just by clicking on the link in the tutorial.
These jars look awesome! I can just picture them in a mad scientist lab. I’ll be featuring it tonight at MM!