Recycled Floating Shelf With Glass Jar Storage & Superfood Paint

For this recycling project, i used glass jars containing expired or leftover food found in my kitchen cabinet and fridge. Glass jars can be quite handy for organising your desk or workspace. When you apply them on the bottom of a shelf like in this project, it can expand your storage room quite good! One of the jars contained superfood Spirulina ( trust me it tastes terrible :-) ) but along with the bad taste, the color of the algue powder is quite nice! Also, when adding a little bit of this powder to a glass of milk, it gives a beautiful green color to it. So i thought... lets try it out as a natural woodstainer for the wooden shelf :-) The reclaimed wood was found in the garden and in need of some restauration. I cutted the ends off and sanded the surface and this piece of wood will become the floating shelf. The 2 steel brackets where found in a dusty corner of my workspace. These are basically the ingredients to work with in this project :-)

Step 1: Collect Materials

List of basic ingredients:

- glass jars with lid
- piece of wood that could function as shelf
- metal brackets of anything that could work as a shelf bracket
- saw, screwdriver, drill, bucket, spray paint, acrylic, paintbrush, sanding machine.

The piece of reclaimed wood was this project's starting point. The edges where clean cut and the surface got sanded and splinters removed.

Step 2: Reusing the Spirulina As a Wood Stainer

I didn't liked this algue powder as a superfood supplement so i was about to throw it away. Since it's a recycling project, i thought maybe i could use it as paint because it has a quite intense colouring ability. Only a little bit of this powder could turn your glass of milk into a green witch poison :-).

Mix some of the powder with half a glass of water and let it soak. Stir until you get a bit of a workable thick liquid and start brushing the wood. You can see it becomes super dark! I thought it would turn a bit lighter while drying but that never happened. Feeling a bit disappointed with its final look i tried to blend in a little bit of white acrylic and that turned out great! Superfood paint winner :-)

Step 3: Cleaning the Jars

Wash the jars and remove the labels. Dry the jar lids well so you can paint them afterwards. I spray painted them white. If the glue of the labels is difficult to remove, try terpentine or sticker remover to get rid of the glue.

Step 4: Assembling Time!

When the spirulina paint is dry, the jars are cleaned and labels removed and the jar lids are ready, we can start to assemble :-) Try out the position of the jars and remember to keep some room for your hand, to be able to loosen/tighten the glass jars. Use 2 screws for applying the jar lids to the wood, to make sure they are not going to rotate.

Step 5: Wall Installation

mount the steel brackets on the wall and mount the shelf afterwards. You are ready!

Step 6: Enjoy Your Extra Shelf Space! :-)

Perfect time to organise your desk and enjoy your result.

Ciao!

Comments

[BryanP100]

I use a similar system in my garage workshop with over 50 jam jars. It makes it dead easy to spot when things are getting low

[acuchetto]

I’m so impressed with your system! I have hundreds of varieties of screws I’ve reclaimed from a slew of disassembled electronics, but I’m rarely able to use them because I don’t have a system for identifying them beyond basic size. My efforts feel futile when I so rarely succeed in my efforts to actually try to match screws with those needed in a project. How would you deal with such a situation?

[JoopB1]

Wow Bryan! This is seriously well organized! :D love it!

[doing2much]

Wow, aren't you organized👍🏼

[ioana.timariu]

Wait, is this how milk paint / stain is made? I tried just now to find references on how to make milk paint at home and I can't find anything. If I like saffron colour, I just add a bunch of saffron to milk? (admitedly this may cost more than buying stain from store)

[sojournertam]

https://www.marthastewart.com/272306/milk-paint-recipe
then instead of using the acrylics that she mentions, you can use foods like spinach or blueberries (juice). You can also use natural dyes from things in nature like black want shells. Just look up “natural dyes”. Sometimes a mordant is necessary to maintain the color for which you can use alum. Easy to find online or at Spanish
Grocery stores w/ a large amount of spices.

[ioana.timariu]

Love it!! Thank you for the link. I will try that.

[JoopB1]

i dont have any experience with milk paint. saffron with white acrylic paint will do a great job too! its not expensive if you just use the random leftovers you already have ;-)

[ioana.timariu]

True!! But for something like a deck... :)

[obillo]

Nice idea and nice work, Joop. Endlessly extendable, too, and can be adpated to existing shelves. Could work very well with Illy coffee cans, which are so well made it's a crime to throw them away. As for jars, do you know whether there's a paint or stain that can be applied to glass to exclude light? That would permit use of the jars to store spices.

[JoopB1]

Hi! Yes a lot of possibilities here :D These cans would be awesome too but i think they dont have a screw cap? Jars you could paint on the outside to prevent light going in but not sure what type would be best

[obillo]

The ILLY brand cans do has screwcaps, the they are very sturdy, well-made cans. Other brands have simple snap caps made of plastic are won't work with your shelf. People must bully their expresso-loving pals into buying ILLY caffe exclusively.

[marcel120464]

Because I have problems with moths (really a plague of annoying insects) in my house I added nylon rivets to the screws that attach the jars to the planchet! I dont want the moths to have an opening for entering the jar. Otherwise it works nicely. Another point is the weariness of the lids. After a while they get worn, so in my next attempt I will use 6 or 7 standard jars instead of 7 different ones.

[JoopB1]

smart one! you mean those indian meal moths? We got these anoying insects also in the kitchen :-( hopefully the jar system wil work better :P

[Cliff Baxter]

Good idea. I m going to reorganize my shed

[JoopB1]

thank you Cliff! first you got to eat a lot of pickles, olives, boiled eggs and other stuff that comes in jars :P

[Butterflyfocus]

Love it great idea! Love the recycling. Also thought I’d mention I use olive oil to get some of the gummy glue off jars works like a charm and no chemicals. Peace

[JoopB1]

thats a smart one! thanks for the tip! :-)

[Penolopy Bulnick]

I love that you used a bunch of random jars to make this :)

[JoopB1]

Thank you :-) When painting the lids in one color it prevents a messy look :-)