Thrift Store Tray Make-Over

About a million years ago I showed you a picture of an ugly tray I bought from Goodwill for a few bucks. I have finally finished the make-over. Spray painting in soggy weather really slows down the process, let me tell you!

Here is the lovely "before" picture:

As much as I loved the fact that it says "I believe in snow angels," I envisioned something a little different...

So here's what I did. Starting with my supplies:

Yellow spray paint from Joann's

Primer from Lowe's

Off-brand Mod Podge from Michaels

Foam brushes

Small piece of fabric from Joann's (you could also use paper. In fact that might be easier.)

I forgot to sneak this into the photo, but I also used Krylon gloss sealer:

I started by spraying the tray with primer, then a number of coats of the yellow spray paint. Not sure if it was just the muggy weather or what, but the tray still felt a little tacky after that, so I covered it with some quick coats of the gloss sealer. That gave it a much more finished look and feel.

The trickiest part was getting the fabric to the right size. I read online that fabric tends to shrink just a tad when you use Mod Podge on it, so I was counting on that, but it turns out that mine didn't shrink at all! So my fabric was a little large, and if I ever do this again that's the first thing I would fix. Oh well!

But I measured up my fabric and stitched it along the edges since I didn't want any nasty rough edges showing. I really like the detail the stitching added too.

Anyway, once I was finished sizing the fabric, I just stuck it to the bottom with Mod Podge and a foam brush. Then I covered the top of the fabric with a little more Mod Podge and flattened out any bubbles.

Here are the "after" pictures!

See, the fabric is just a little too big.... 

My husband thought this would be a really good way to bring him breakfast in bed (ha ha), but instead I'm using it to corral all my random scrapbooking supplies, so that they all stay in one place and hopefully keep me more organized!

Overall I love how it turned out, and I want to go back to Goodwill and snatch up all the other ugly wooden trays they had!

Scrapbook Room

I plan to spend a lot of this wonderful 3 day weekend scrapbooking and getting caught up on projects (and of course cleaning my house. I really don't know how it gets so dirty during the week.). Since I have nothing yet to show you today, I will give you a little tour of my scrapbook room. Originally our second bedroom was going to be a guest room, but we never bought a second bed. Then it was going to be Dave's study, but he never used it for that much (he prefers the living room floor, or the dining room table, or my parents' back porch). Since the room was basically turning into a junk room, I decided my scrapbooking and I could take it over. 

Here is a look at the mess creativity happening on my table right now:

Here's a bigger look at the generally organized chaos. 

I even cleaned up this room for the pictures. Look at that uncluttered floor! 

(Anyone want that arm chair? We are giving it away for free!)

My sewing machine and some embossing supplies. (And our enormous printer! It's so big and ugly, but it prints things for super cheap, so I'm okay with it.)

My laptop finally has a home! My family was getting rid of this old TV cart, and it turns out to be perfect for my computer, cricut, external hard drive, and laminating machine. I love it. 

Wish I could say that filing cabinet is full of craft supplies! But sadly, no. 

Okay, now it's back to scrapping and cleaning. 

Gingerbread Houses

Happy weekend! So far I've spent my weekend cleaning up my house (which was really overdue), taking care of a sick doggie, watching a cute family of ducks that live on the lake by my house, and reading this book:

Okay, I know I've read it about 50 times already, but it's just too good. Probably my favorite of the HP books. I got hooked on it again this morning and couldn't do anything else until I finished it. Now I'm tempted to start book 4, but not too tempted since it's one of my least favorites in the series (after #2). 

Here's my layout for today. It's from back in December when we decorated gingerbread houses. I finally overcame my fear of my sewing machine, and did some zigzag stitching. It took a few tries, and I'm still not good at figuring out the right tension, but it worked here! I've always wanted to do that. It's such a fun way to add subtle embellishing. I found a lot of good tips on how to stitch on paper here and here.

The paper is from a fun Paper Studio pack from Hobby Lobby. I really liked the patterns because they didn't scream Christmas, but they still give a Christmas-y feel. The title was done using my Cricut and free fonts I found in various places.