Tray Reveal

Remember my post here about my awesome thrift store finds? Well today I am going to share with you the finished tray.

First let me remind you what it looked like straight from the thrift store.

The tray itself was in excellent shape, but of course it was dirty and dusty from being owned by someone else, and probably sitting in the thrift store for a while, and on top of that I was not fond of that green coloring {this picture actually makes the green not look so bad}

So I brought this piece home, and allowed Andrew to do the sanding, and away I went.

I wanted an entirely white tray so I could add color to it with the items that would sit in it & with the pattern I would paint on the bottom surface.

completely white

After painting it white, I found the pattern I wanted to use for the bottom, printed it off the internet, cut out the details, and traced it onto the tray {I now realize just painting right over the 'stencil' would have made this project less time consuming}

Now it was time to paint the details. This is where it became most time consuming, which is why I mentioned above it would have been way easier to simply paint over the stencil, but thats okay.

And now for the big reveal...

I used acrylic paint for the entire piece so I knew I had to seal it with something to avoid a ruined piece in the future & all that hard work go down the drain. I learned that a polyurethane seal would eventually turn the white paint yellow, so instead a polyacrylic seal would allow the original color to remain & protect it from any disasters it may come in contact with!

Isn't it cute? I'm so excited to place it on a coffee table when I eventually get my own apartment again, and I can't wait to add some cute decorative pieces to place on it.