No squeezing required

     Working in a call center at Hewlett-Packard, I encounter a lot of angry people throughout the day. I get yelled at constantly for things that are out of my control, mistakes the customer made, or whatever, yet I get the short end of the stick on the matter. "I understand you just work there and it's not your fault," is what I hear sometimes from people right before they pierce my eardrum. I try not to let it bother me because, after all, I do only work there, but it's hard not to let the yelling increase my stress level. So I have tried to help reduce that by bringing a heart-shaped stress ball to work to squeeze when I feel my blood pressure rising. It works a little, but the problem with that is I find my left hand hurts by the end of the day and I don't want to end up like Hanson from "Scary Movie 2" and his "strong hand". I decided to ditch the stress ball and just deal with it until I saw a post about a mind jar from a pin on Pinterest. I love love love glitter and anything that sparkles, so when I saw this I had to try it.

      I re-purposed a jar that I had from some of my mommy's homemade peach jam (yummy) and went to town. Like the original post instructs, I used glitter glue, loose glitter, and hot water mixed together. I started by adding the glitter glue so I could swirl that around and get it to dissolve. After that, I put some of the glitter into the water (I used the remainder of a tube that I used to cover Christmas lights for Apothecary Jars) and continued to add more glitter glue until it was at the desired consistency. I didn't measure, so I wouldn't be able to give you an exact amount, but I would recommend to add a little at a time until the glitter falls at a slow enough rate for you. (The glue thickens the water, so the more that is in there, the slower the glitter falls.) Once I had added enough glitter glue, I got a little glitter crazy and decided to add a bit more loose glitter so that there was more in there to swirl around. That was a mistake, but I guess you could call it a happy mistake because it just meant that I add to use a larger jar and add a little more glitter glue to thicken it up a bit. I added a couple drops of blue food coloring so that the entire thing was blue, but it probably could have done without the dye. After testing it out a bit and deciding I was happy with the consistency and amount of sparkle that swirled around, I made sure the top was secured tightly and wrapped it in duck tape. I have quite a few different designs of tape to choose from, but I decided on light blue with white polka dots because it is adorable and the color matches the glitter. I will probably re-tape the lid so it looks a bit nicer, but all-in-all I love the end result! Now to take it to work and test it out... 

I have lots of glitter and glitter glue to choose from...

I narrowed it down to blue and purple because I love both those colors...

I finally chose blue because I feel like I am looking into the ocean and I love it

I cut the glitter glue tube so it was easier to squeeze out.

This is how it looked without the glue dissolved into the water. The glitter fell quickly once under the surface of the water.

I added some silver glitter-glue, too. 

Once the water/glue mixture was fairly thick, I could put the glue on top without it sinking into the mix quickly.

This is a gif, but I don't think it shows the animation...

I love tape.

This is what it looks like all shaken up.

This is what it looks like after settling for about 10 minutes. The water is thick enough so it is sort of gel-like but still moves the glitter easily.