DIY tray

I have been looking at home design photos online, and in all the elegant ones I saw a beautiful tray on nearly every table. Of course I have expensive and picky taste, and couldn't reasonably afford the one's I liked. So I purchased a tray and the paint to do it myself. It's not nearly perfect, but I love it and I'm proud of it.I started by purchasing an orange $20 tray for Tuesday Morning. It was really cute, but I didn't like the color. I decided to paintover it, but when I was buying the paint I found an unpainted one at A. C. Moore for $15 that had curves and was more elegant.

This photo is of my original orange tray. Wouldn't it be perfect if it was pink? But I love the one I ended up with!

This is a photo of the tray I ended up with. This is a photo on my back porch spray painting a base on it.

Now I'm doing the first layer of white paint. I spread it really thin, and put a lot of payers on and it did really well.

You can see slightly darker white in the middle, this is my stencil. I got some cardstock, traced the curved end, measured a certain length at each end and then traced the curve where I marked.

Bit of advice: Make a plan on placement ahead of time. For instance, do you want it up on the sides, do you want them symmetrical? If you want a line in the middle of the tray, do this line first. My mistake was to start from one side and go to the other. One line ended up going up the edge. I ended up using oil paint (great paint for coverage) to start with a clean white slate again.

Also: Don't use pen or pencil to draw boundaries, the paint doesn't cover it very easily. Next time I will make multiple stencils, place them where I want it to be white, and keep them there until I am done with the pink.

At this point I am painting along the lines. I found it easiest to use foam brushes and slowly paint a solid line along the line using the side of the brush. Also, the oil paint did a great job over covering mistakes, so I did all the pink and then touched up the lines using the white.

Finally almost done. As you can see the pink is drying, almost ready for another coat.

At this point I just got frustrated with it and stopped taking photos. I just wanted to be done. After this I did touch ups and painted gold along the edges. To do this I used a little foam brush and did a kinda sloppy job. Then I used the larger foam brush's side to make a solid line between the white and gold.

When it was dry I sprayed a top coat glaze on it to give it a sheen.

The next photo is the finished product. Keep in mind this took about a week of constant work. It isn't nearly perfect, but I'm proud of it.

Yay! So pretty! I think the pink lines are a little crooked, but they all are so it doesn't look very bad, I don't think. Also, I accidently painted some white on one of the finished lines. In order to fix it I would have had to remix the pink and waste a lot of it. I decided to just keep something on top of it instead.

This is what it looks like now. I have my twig pumpkins I bought from Target for $1 and $2.50 each. I also have my mom's book "Small and Container Gardening." To the left of the tray is a photo book of Audrey Hepburn, and a small book call "How to Live Like a Lady."

I hope you enjoyed this. This who project probably came to around $30 at the most. Some of the paint I already had, and all of the supplies I ended up with extra. I would say that it was worth it. One day I may try it again, once I have more experience.

I also really love book on my coffee table. This week I have three books coming in the mail: "Essentially Lilly," "The Official Preppy Handbook," and a decor book with bright colors. I can't wait to add them to my coffee table.