When You Wish Upon A Tray...

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I keep finding trays. Doesn't it seem like when you find something to re-purpose, you keep finding more of that thing wherever you go? I found an old tray with a glass bottom at an antique store and initially, I thought I would reverse decoupage the glass part because it looked pretty bad. But once I got it cleaned up, it looked pretty good so another idea came to mind.

It had a beat up finish but was kind of "70's brown". Taped off the glass part, painted it black acrylic paint, dry brushed it with darker brown, didn't like it, glazed it with black and glazing medium and then finally went randomly over it w/ silver Rub N Buff  which really made the handles pop.

In one of my scavenging visits to JoAnn's, I'd picked up a package of "Hip In A Hurry" vinyl that was 70% off that I thought would be perfect for this project:

The best part is there are 4 sheets in the package and I only used one for this, so 3 more projects..yeah!
 You can guess from my play on words in the title which one I used? No? OK here:

When You WISH Upon A Tray

And despite my earlier statement that "more is more" and I really thought I was going to do more on this, I decided that simpler was better. That won't be a habit! To finish it off, I used two Prima paper flowers I'd picked up while on vacation.

Now, if I could only find a cheese dome!

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Another Tray Transformation

On the same trip where I picked up the other tray for $.99, I picked this one up for slightly more....gasp $2.99. Oh the extravagance!

I liked the shape and it was in decent enough condition. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it but since when is that an inhibitor? Mr. Chocolate and I had recently been to a lovely street fair in the town of Snohomish, WA and he spotted a goodie bag of watch parts. Mr. Chocolate is a watch collector and loves all things watch and clock related. So I bought this bag of goodies:

and the vendor threw in a bag of containers for $25. Haven't done much w/ Steampunk but thought it would be perfect for playing with that. Then, the other day, as I was visiting The Graphics Fairy ( whom I call the Queen) and saw a lovely antique pocket watch image, I got an idea. So first I painted the tray black...didn't worry about the middle too much because I knew I was going to add some paper.

Decoupaged two complementary styles of scrapbook paper ( one is the same paper I used in the other tray and one of my fav patterns) and then went over the painted parts with thinned white tacky glue to give it a weathered look. When dry, I dry brushed it with gold paint and lightly brushed the center of the tray with it too. Then to my bag of watch goodies and took complementary pieces of "watch guts" and glued them to opposite corners of the tray.

Last but not least, I printed the antique pocket watch image onto clear label paper ( I'm in love w/ Avery 8665) and the used my Printshop program to create the word "Time" in Latin . Even though it's clear, I trimmed closely, pulled off the backing and stuck it to the center of the tray. Done and done:

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Thrift Store Store Tray Makeover

I picked this up on one of my thrift store outings for $.99. I almost left it as is because it had a weathered look to it already, but like most of us...I JUST had to play with it. Maybe it was a sign that I should have left it alone because nothing was going right but I kept playing with it ( and didn't take pictures of the things that were going wrong while they were going wrong).  The end result after painting it green, a crackle fail, dry brushing it white and then glazing it w/a pewter glaze and decoupaging a piece of scrapbook paper to the bottom:

It was always intended for the kitchen to hold some this and thats , so I finished it off with a couple of forks I picked up for $.20 ea at the thrift store, and flat backed glass marbles for feet. I pounded the forks flat so things wouldn't catch on them. My husband was afraid to know what I was doing in my office/art room when he heard the banging lol. Definitely a "don't come in here" moment.

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