Upcycled Tea Tray Tutorial

Oh, how my wee Zoe loves her tea set. We have countless tea parties where we pretend to sip cup after cup of hot cocoa.

And when her tea set is all set up on her pink table, she even manages to convince her older brothers to stop for a spell and have a cup of hot cocoa with her.

So, when I came across this tray I knew it was destined to become part of our tea party fun.



First we roughed it up a bit with some sand paper. Then we painted the side pieces of the tray.   I let Zoe pick the color. Of course, she chose...

Pink. This girl would live in a Pink World if she could manage it.

Since we were planning on covering up the bland paper in the bottom, it didn't matter if Zoe wasn't the most accurate painter. It would be much much easier to use spray paint on this project (for some of the reasons why spray paint is totally awesome, check out this fun post by my friend Sundi) but I opted for just the regular ol' acrylic craft paint. Because #1: It let Zoe be involved and #2: I didn't have any hot pink spray paint on hand. We used that all up on her little tea table.

I had some fun scrapbook paper for the tray down in my Pit of Despair (otherwise known as my sewing room/office) so I measured the tray, cut the paper to size and we spread some Modge Podge on the bottom of the tray and slapped it down, spreading it out all nice and neat. 

But the tray is wider than twelve inches, so we also had to add a border of a coordinating paper. Then we covered it all with another layer of modge podge. 

Then I lightly sanded the corners and edges of the tray, roughing it up a bit. Ryan sealed it with a clear coat spray (which I could have done myself, but he's just nice like that) and after it dried it was ready to play with!

You can't see her sparkley cape so good in this picture. 

She is also sporting a very nice cat mask. Yep, not just everyone gets to have a tea party with Super Kitty Cat and her doll, Pinky. :)