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So glad to have you joining me for this series. 31 Pinterest projects in 31 days. So here it is, the FIRST one!

Many of you probably have this gorgeous picture from Country Living pinned on your Pinterest page as I did. And if you do a search on Pinterest for “Mason jar soap dispenser” you will come up with lots of different tutorials.

Some of the different tutorials feature spray painted lids, the zinc lids from vintage Mason jars, and some even had the lids and pump spray painted. So I decided to try out 2 different options.

You will need a Mason jar (or any type of jar), and a soap dispenser. You can just use any dispenser off of any soap dispenser you have laying around. I used 2 dispensers – a foaming one from Bath & Body Works and another pump off a regular dispenser.

I picked up my Mason jar at Hobby Lobby – watch for their sale on glassware and you can get them for 50% off. So mine cost 89¢ and came with the lid too. And the pump was free so this was a very cheap project!

You will need to make a hole in the lid. You can do this many ways – with a drill, with a nail and a hammer, or with wire snips. I just used a nail and punched holes and then bent the metal back under the lid. Make sure that your hole is big enough for the pump/straw part to go in but small enough so that the “screw” part of the soap dispenser will cover the hole.

Like this…

Now the next part depends on whether you just want to paint the lid, or if you want to paint the lid and pump together. I wanted to try both ways to see which one I liked better.

For one of my dispensers just painted the lid. So I put the Mason jar into a plastic bag and then screwed down the lid over the bag.

For the other dispenser, I wanted to paint the entire thing. So I went ahead and glued the pump to the lid. I just used regular hot glue and made sure to really coat the surrounding of the pump/edge of the hole underneath. You will want to create a seal of sorts so your soap doesn’t leak out and so that the raw metal metal edges don’t rust.

Here is my first dispenser painted with Krylon Oil Rubbed Bronze spray paint. I primed with gray spray paint first, then did 2 light coats of the ORB paint.

Here are both of the dispensers all done! I wanted to be able to decide which one worked better, and which one I liked better. My husband and I both prefer the one that the dispenser and lid are the same color

Here’s a tip for you. Do you know how to make your own foaming hand soap? It is super easy and can save a lot of money! Just add any kind of soap (I used a clear yummy smelling hand soap, Dial?) to bottom of your soap dispenser. You will only want 1/2 inch or 1 inch depending on the size of your container. Add enough water to fill up your container. Then just do a simple shake or stir it to mix and you have an entire jar of soap and you only used a tiny bit of soap.

Here is one jar in my kitchen filled with Dawn soap.

So much prettier than that Dawn bottle sitting on my sink!

And the other one is in my bathroom I added a drop of cake icing color to the soap so it would be lightly tinted. Sort of looks like a blue mason jar

I LOVE it, but….

get a little closer and this is where this project starts to go wrong.

See my dispenser… yep, the paint is coming off. Not pretty.

Now I have seen plastic soap dispensers just like this spray painted and they hold up just fine.

Allison at House of Hepworths painted an entire Dawn foaming hand pump and has even updated her post and said that a year later it still looks exactly the same. So I know it can work. But she used spray paint specifically designed for PLASTIC! So I could maybe try that.

BUT, I have also had a small spot on my lid that I accidently nicked with my fingernail chip too.

The concept works perfect – it is just in trying to paint the lids/dispensers where things start to come apart. So if I could find a pretty metal dispenser and a lid that matched and I didn’t have to paint either one, this project would be perfect! I did find a site to buy pretty metal soap pumps for cheap – about $3.00 each. So that is another option.

Or I could just decide that not having them match is ok too. Because honestly this dispenser I had pinned from Winthrop Chronicles is very cute!

If I do decide to change it or re-spray paint mine, I will update this post and let you know! Until then, I am going to just enjoy not having the ugly Dawn bottle on my kitchen sink.

Have you ever made a Mason Jar soap dispenser? What worked for you? Do you have any suggestions for my chipping pump?