DIY gift idea: Jam jar soap dispenser.

I don't know about you, but I'm having to get more and more thrifty and creative with my gift giving lately. As the giving season draws nearer, I'm compiling a list of inexpensive and unique DIY gifts that I can make for the special people in my life. This one is a super easy and cute homemade gift idea that won't break the bank this Christmas.

Materials:

Liquid hand soap
Fake flowers, or any other fun items that will stand up in the soap
A glass jar with lid
Hot glue gun and glue sticks**

** After a couple uses, I found the hot glue did not hold this together as well as I'd hoped. I used Epoxy in place of hot glue the second time around and had much better results.

First, you need to make a hole in the lid for the soap pump to fit into. I drew a circle in the center of the lid just slightly smaller than the pump size. Then using an old sharp tip knife and a hammer, on a cutting bored, I banged little holes around the circle. Then I took the knife and cut around the holes VERY CAREFULLY until the circle could be popped out. This really is not a very safe method and I highly recommend wearing safety gloves if you try it, but it worked for me and it was the only way I could think of without using some kind of power tools that are far more dangerous for me to handle.

Next, place your flowers in the jar. You could also use clean stones, pearls, pine cones, small plastic toys, or anything else that is larger than the tube and won't get sucked up when you pump the soap. The possibilities are endless!

Remove the pump from your bottle of soap and set aside. Pour the soap into your jar, right on top of the flowers until it's nearly full. I'd say about a half an inch from the top is good. Replace the lid on the jar.

Using some good old hot glue** (change hot glue to epoxy), trace a line of glue around the edge of the round screw part of the pump (screw part is a technical term :P) and insert the pump into the jar through the hole you cut, and press it firmly until it dries. The beauty of hot glue is that this only takes a few seconds.

Make sure your lid is secure and you're all done! Go ahead and test it out, it should work just fine :)


This entire project cost me only $1 plus tax. The jar was left over from jam we finished a while back and I had the fake flowers laying around. The only purchase I made was for the soap at the dollar store. Cute and thrifty!