Thrift Store Tray #3

I’m back with another tray redesign. I know it probably seems I have a thing for trays and you would be right! Trays are such a wonderful organization tool! You can instantly make any clutter look organized by setting them in trays. True story.

This is what I started with. Just a boring wood tray with metal handles with the plating rubbing off I found at the thrift store. When I needed a tray to serve drinks for a party, I quickly cut up a random placemat I had laying around to fit the tray and used it temporarily like this. It worked like a charm! Placemats make excellent tray covers as the plastic ones act like a big coaster for drinks and they’re easy to cut to size. See my other thrifted tray that I made over with a placemat here.

I couldn’t make the orange placemat work with the wood or any other paint color without making it look Halloweenish. But you know what? Spray paint can pretty much paint any surface you want! So, I took a chance and sprayed the placemat. Then I painted the handles because they looked pretty raggedy anyway. When I put the handles back on the tray, the screws stood out too much, so I sprayed those too.

I chose to do an X symbol because I typically sign my personal correspondence with an x. It’s a habit I adopted when I lived in London for a spell. The British often sign off with an x or more to indicate affection to all their friends. But after it was done, I wasn’t quite happy with the outcome. Perhaps if I had stretched the X to the four corners instead of having it float in the center…. I aimed to fix the problem by spraying out the two small gold triangles in the middle.

And now I have this tray that can be used in three different looks:

Nothing I like better than an object that can be used in various ways! What do you think of my latest project? Have you any great thrift projects to share?

Total time: On and off for a day. It took some time to wait for the paint to dry between colors. Then I had to make the correction.

Total cost: The tray was $10 from Value Village. The placemat was $2. The spray paints were $4 each, but I didn’t use up both cans.