A fun reason to buy lots of pickles...

When the hubs and I were in Copenhagen, recently, we had the pleasure of visiting a few great design shops.  At least one of them boasted lights made of glass jars that resembled this:

Warm jar light hanging in Michelle's Cupcakes, ZH.

Inspired by our visit to the 'city of design', we came home from the trip determined to make a light fixture using a glass jar.  Armed with a small pickle jar we came up with this:

The bulb ain't pretty, but it's energy-saving at 4 watts.

Bulb in action.

Replaced initial bulb with a three-watt halogen. 

The only real challenge was cutting a hole through the top of the pickle jar lid that would support the bulb socket and attendant cable.  Hubs used a pair of wire cutters for the task and it worked fairly well the first time round.  The rough bits of the lid were then bent down with a pair of needle nose pliers.  Because Swiss tenants take their light fixtures with them upon moving, our spare rooms are equipped with cables ready to be hooked up to lighting.  Hubs stripped the cord with attached socket (9CHF at local hardware store), separating the two color-coded bits on the inside and attached them by color--brown/line and blue/neutral in our case--to what was hanging down from the ceiling.  The process of attaching the jar to the ceiling took less than ten minutes. You should check the local wiring codes for your line/neutral colors.

We've purchased a large jar of pickles in anticipation of our next jar light project.  I'm excited to see where the next jar will hang!