How to Make a Solar Jar Light DIY

Whether you’re like me and have a beautiful vintage mason jar you want to use or a mason canning jar you can’t wait to make something out of, you’re going to love having this fun DIY mason jar night light. It’s one of those easy DIY projects you can do with a small budget and it’s an easy way to add lighting to your home, camper, or campsite.

The first step is deciding what type of jar you want to you. The vintage jar version is gorgeous, but you have to be cautious, and because it’s delicate I only use mine in my kitchen. There are more ways to use the wide-mouth mason jars though. It depends on where you choose to use them, this vintage jar won’t see a camping site, or make an easy nightlight for a kid’s room. So grab a mason jar or several and let’s start crafting.

Sourcing Your Mason Jar

My solar mason jar night light is made using a favorite vintage blue mason jar. These vintage blue mason jars are beautiful and deserve displayed instead of stored in a cupboard. The vintage blue jar makes gorgeous mason jar lights, but I need to protect the jar and make sure it isn’t damaged in any way. If interested in using a vintage glass jar, check out your local thrift store for one of these glass-lidded vintage jars, they make lovely DIY mason jar lights that come on at night for a few hours all on their own.

If you don’t want to use a vintage jar, I suggest grabbing wide-mouth mason jars because they make the DIY mason jar lights even easier to do. You will follow the same process, and have fun decorating them in a variety of ways, or keep them simple clear glass and make several as a great way to add a warm glow to a campsite and night. They would be a great way to line along a path between campers. Or place it inside a camper or tent for extra light at night, no nearby at night no nearby light sockets are needed.

To make your mason jar solar lights, you need a mason jar and a solar light that fits inside the opening of the jar. The inexpensive Dollar Store solar lights work well for this easy project, because they aren’t too bright and glaring, which is perfect for indoor use. You could also try one from Dollar Tree.

Things to Look for When Purchasing the Solar Lights

If you plan on using your solar lights indoors like I did, you can purchase any Dollar Store solar lamp that fits inside your jar. I took one of my lid rings with me shopping to make sure the jar fits, unfortunately, it didn’t help. To make sure the jar fits, save yourself a trip and take the mason jar with you when you go shopping. You want to purchase a solar light small enough to fit inside your jar. I took just the glass lid shopping with me, assuming the light would fit inside the neck of the jar, but it didn’t. Take a jar with you when shopping.

Not willing to force the solar lamp inside my vintage jar and risk cracking it. I decided to downsize the solar lamp to make it fit. Turns out it was easy to do and worked just fine.

Remove the top portion that includes the solar lamp and light. Throw the rest including the stand away.

If your solar lantern fits inside your jar properly, you’re golden and can skip the next several steps, skip down to assembling the mason jar and solar lamp.

To Disassemble a Dollar Store Solar Lamp

Taking the lamp apart only takes a couple of steps, place the top part of the solar lamp on a hard surface. With a hammer and a flat-headed screwdriver, tap the screwdriver very lightly, it doesn’t take much. Punch the plastic all around the outside of the lamp to remove the outer ring.

There should now be two parts, the light and the solar panel connected by wires. With a wire cutter trim off the excess plastic. Make sure not to crack the solar panel or break the piece of wire it doesn’t need to be tiny, just small enough to fit.

Trimming the plastic was pretty easy to do,  all I did was snip the plastic a little bit with the end of the wire cutters.  Then I twisted the wire cutters to break off the plastic in little pieces.  This took about two minutes.

Assembling the Mason Jar Solar Lamp

Using the mason jar and a piece of cardstock, on the wrong side of the paper trace out the top of the jar.

Then cut a circle 1/4 inch larger than the drawn circle. This will leave extra paper to fold over the edge of the jar.

Place your solar panel on top of the paper and trace the outline. This time follow the lines and cut out a hole in the middle of your paper.

Align the solar cell and the central hole, tape around the outside with white masking tape.

Tape the battery pack to the back of the solar cell.

Flip everything over and tape the top side making it as neat as possible.

Fit the light portion inside the jar, and wrap the paper over the lid.

Clamp your glass lid back onto the jar, securing the light in place.  Here is the end result.  

Other Solar Light and Mason Jar Projects

I find it fun to pair vintage items with new products to make them useful again. Here are some other ideas including solar lights with a thrift store find.