Patriotic / 4th of July Apothecary Jars

I’ve never done 4th of July / Patriotic apothecary jars before, because I have never been able to figure out what to put in them. So this year I got to work early. I started with red, white and blue beans (bought at Kroger for about $1/bag) and then grabbed some red and white decorative balls I had in the basement (which I bought in the vase filler aisle at Target).

But like I was telling you before, I didn’t have any blue balls(*).  Instead of going on an all out man hunt for them, I decided to make my own. I bought some navy blue RIT dye and dyed some of the white balls I already had. For whatever reason, I have a ton of white ones. Must have been some amazing project idea that I had and never did anything about. The third jar had me stumped. I tried out red, white and blue sand, but it was SO bright compared to the other jars, so I nixed that. Then I tried small paper lanterns (from 4th of July lights) and they looked dumb too. I considered bows, ribbon, etc., but finally settled on flowers. I went to Michael’s and found the darkest red, white and blue flowers I could. I discarded the stems and only used the actual flower parts. I think the flowers cost $5.99 each and I used one of each color.

I’d say the project jars cost around $30 when I was all done.  Not too bad considering I will leave it up from now until Labor Day.  So what do you think??  What would you use in them?

(*) Yep, still laughing.