Jam Wagon (Rustic Cart w/ Jam Jars

This was a really fun project, made for a challenge in the eCal, SCAL and Create Facebook page. I first made the cart from SVG Cuts' Harvest Sunset, which is designed to hold six coffee pods in its bed. I'm not a coffee drinker, so decided to use the jam jars from SVG Cuts' Mums on the Porch.

The plan was to replace the circles in the cart insert with octogons to hold the jam jars. I had to first shrink down the jam jars so that six would fit into the bed of the cart. They ended up being 1-7/8" in diameter. Hence, the octogons needed to be 2" in diameter. I then needed to redesign the overlay for the insert with the octogons, leaving the small reverse border. Also, I deleted all coffee pod holes in the bottom of the cart so that the jars could set on it. (I believe the coffee pods "hang" in the holes?).

The texture on the front bumper is from a stamp by Just Rite, called Crackle Background. I've used this a lot and really love it for distressing. The Jam Wagon sign was made in Affinity Photo and the image of the jam jars are the actual photos of the jars I made for this project. The autumn leaves digi paper is from the Autumn paper pack by Carta Bella. 

One of my most favorite parts of the cart are the wheels. These were designed so well! They were easy to put together (compared to other circular items with lots of tabs), and the result is just beautiful to me.  I don't know how Mary came up with this design, but I think she's brilliant. The little band around the other edge was painted with Color Burst bronze liquid metallic paint. Once dry, I use a black dauber to dull/smudge them.

Next for the jars. As I noted, these are from Mary's most recent kit, called Mums on the Porch. They're really easy to make, and very satisfying to make as they go together really well. I selected all of the pieces at once and just dragged the size down so that the center of the lid was under the 2" of the octogon hole, so about 1-7/8". 

The digi paper for the lids came from Etsy. These digi papers came in large patterns, so I shrunk the raspberry print from 12x12 into 12 squares of 3" each. Even though they are large designs they are seamless, so you can attach as many as you want together and the pattern continues seamlessly. I loved the little lines through the raspberry paper, but the peach ones did not have lines. So, I selected the background only on the peach paper and put it on another layer (in Affinity Photo) and inserted stripes in a light yellow between the background and the print of the peaches. Then, just merged it all together. This peach one required only 9 squares of 4" each. The labels came from Creative Fabrica (Summer Digital Design).

For the embossing on the jars I used an embossing folder from Woo Yang Fun, called Water Wave. After the jar was completely done, I used  Tim Holtz Distress Micro Glaze over the embossed areas, which gave it a sheen and more varied definition.

I think that's about it. I probably went into too much detail, but I think it's easy to think that these projects are just put together quickly when, in fact, there are so many time-comsuming details and planning that go into them. But, no complaints! It's still so fun to make it and see how it turns out.

Off to Harvest Festival!