Tag: tray

Craft Projects

Revamped silver trays

Jessica Smith

As another fun project from Craft Day this past weekend, Amy, Carrie and I spiffed up some old, silver trays we found at the thrift store.

This project was quick and easy, and the finished product was super cute. First, we cleaned up our trays with silver polish.

Once they were all shiny and new, we cut out paper for the insides of the tray. Once the paper was cut out, we put thin layers of Mod Podge on our trays where we wanted the paper to stick.

Then, we placed the paper on top, smoothing out all of the bubbles. with the bubbles all M.I.A., we coated the paper with another layer of Mod Podge.

I did two coats on mine, trying to wipe the excess off the edges so it wouldn’t leave Mod Podgey residue on my trays.

Tip: Be really careful when smoothing our your Mod Podge. Carrie had a casualty on her tray, removing part of her map. Australia is now “Autralia” and what we yell when craft projects go awry.

Once the trays were dry, we added chalkboard contact paper embellishments to a few of our trays. Who knew chalkboard contact paper even existed (Answer: Carrie)?

How cute is Amy’s tray!? I love it and have total tray envy. She’s planning on hanging it up and using it as a Vacation Countdown for her and her hubby’s upcoming trips!

My trays turned out cute, too. They would make cute “His” and “hers” signs, but I’m not sure for what.

Carrie’s tray is very Carrie. I think she’s going to use it as a catch-all on her dresser.

And here’s my other tray. Can you tell we all like maps?!

As we were finishing up our project, our honorary crafter of the day walked, err, crawled in to see what we were up to.

Hi, Eli!

He was digging our sweet fabric. I can’t blame him.

What a cutie!

Craft Projects

DIY Device Charging Station

Jessica Smith

Let me start out this post by saying I am so excited to share this project with you. I get a lot of my ideas from Pinterest or other projects I’ve seen people do, but this project was 100 percent my idea 🙂 Now, that’s not to say someone else out there hasn’t already done it… but I haven’t stumbled upon it yet.

A little background on this project: I just received an iPhone for work, which is totally fantastic. Unfortunately, iPhones are a battery suck, and I am the world’s worst device charger. I never remember. Ever. If my phone is charged, it’s because the hubby plugged it in for me. On top of the work iPhone, I have a personal phone and a Kindle Fire that need to be charged often enough. So, I had a great idea to make myself a device charging station to rest on my night stand in hopes that I might actually charge the millions of electronics that I use on a daily basis.

Now, device charging stations are not new. They are available online and can charge lots of electronics, depending on what you get.

I decided to make my own using a tray I had bought a while ago for 99 cents from a thrift store.

Enter tray.

Like I said, I have three devices I need to charge on a somewhat regular basis. I traced the devices onto the bottom of the tray, spacing them out so they all fit nicely on the tray.

With the outlines on the tray, I then drew a line to the side of the tray where I want the cords to rest so they align with the charging ports of the devices.

Afterward, I drew a dot on the opposite side of the tray to drill a hole for the cord to pass through.

Time to drill the hole!

After this step, I took a pencil and connected the three holes to the top of the tray and marked a spot for my jigsaw.

Time to jigsaw! This was my first time using my jigsaw — totally awesome!

Obviously this tray wasn’t the highest quality, so the cruddy wood chipped a lot when I sawed the three channels down the side. Time to sand!

It took a while to sand the channels down so they were smooth, round and wide enough to fit the charging cords. After I was done, I sanded down the rest of the tray so the paint would stick well.

(As you can see as the pictures continue, it was getting darker outside… I was really into this project and stayed outside working on it until 9 p.m. on Monday. Sorry for the dark pics!)

Time to paint. I used the same paint that we used to paint our family room — Behr’s Contemplation.

I let the tray dry overnight.

Tuesday I got home from a daylong class on Adobe Illustrator (totally awesome!) and had to write a story for work, but all I really wanted to do was work on my charging station some more.

I bought an atlas at the thrift story that had an amazing map on the inside covers, so I carefully removed the pages of the book so I could use them on my tray.

I coated the bottom of the tray with mod podge (the same exact kind I used in the dictionary box project), then I placed the paper in the tray and coated the top with mod podge. I let the mod podge dry overnight, then put one more coat on this morning before my class.

Here’s how it looked before it dried… it bubbled a bit, but it didn’t stay like that once it dried.

It turned out beautifully!

The carved out channels are the perfect width to hold onto the wires so they don’t slip out when you aren’t charging your devices.

It fits perfectly on my nightstand and is going to be so helpful for me!

LOVE.

Thrift Store Finds

Thrift Store Quick Fix: Silver plates and trays

Jessica Smith

I’ve been toying with decorating ideas and am really getting into rooms with silver accents. I was at the thrift store last week and I found these wonderful silver plates. I’ve seen a lot of neat ideas on Pinterest using these plates. Here are a few of my favorites:

Silver plates mounted as wall decor.
Silver plate with chalkboard paint.

Anyway, I picked up these four plates from the thrift store for about $10 — what a steal! The only downside was that the plates were filthy. You can’t quite see it in the first photo, but every single plate was tarnished. I had silver jewelry wipes, so I wiped down the frames a bit. That helped, but it didn’t quite do the trick. So, I bought silver polish at Target and scrubbed away. This stuff is very easy to use. Squirt it directly onto a silver surface or into a paper towel, then rub until the tarnish comes off. Take a clean paper towel and remove excess polish.

Check out the difference: After I buffed the polish off, I washed the trays with dish soap and hot water. Wipe the water off, and the tray is as good as new. Here’s the tray all cleaned up:

Depending on how I decide to use this plate, I might try and buff out the scratches using my new dremel.

Look at how nicely this one cleaned up:

It sure does make for a pretty display tray. I wonder how I’ll use it?