This display shows that tiered trays don’t have to be elaborate and how you can use items around your house to create themed tiered trays. The display will be available at our booth at The Gray Wall in Sullivan, Missouri, just in time for the 4th of July. I also will have quite a bit of cobalt blue depression glass from my own collection that will be available. It is so beautiful, but I just don’t have room for it anymore. And how perfect for your July 4th celebrations!
Once I gave this little garden gnome a patriotic outfit with paint pens, I had to go on a hunt around my house to find things to display with him.
The tiered tray was a bronze color until I gave it a hammered black spray paint makeover.
I love this tray as you can change out plates on it. Right now it holds two plates from my colbalt depression glass collection.
The USA and July 4th are just stickers that will come off and you can reuse the little cup and teapot for other holidays. Dollar Tree carries a variety of letter/number stickers.
The colbalt blue vase from my collection on the left is perfect for this theme. It has an eagle design on one side and George Washington on the other. And the goblet with the stars and the colbalt blue insert and red flower inside is perfect!
I’m still working on a red/white/blue bead garland, but it will be ready when this display and my colbalt blue collection goes to the booth this week!
I’m an early riser and lately I’ve been creating projects. But today I was going to get an early start on cleaning. At least I started out with good intentions.
I was ready to tackle cleaning up my crafting area. But then I picked up a board. Not just any board. This board came from a very unique pick. You never know what something will become sometimes, but you know it will turn into something cool some day. Hence, cleaning up my craft area.
Macy’s in the mall at Cape Girardeau, Missouri was going out of business. They were selling everything, including fixtures……and this board. I loved the dark grain in it and the edges, so… it came home with me.
When I picked it up today to store it somewhere, I suddenly knew what it was going to be. Cleaning was going to have to wait. I had everything I needed. Paint, a stencil, feet, handles, and satin finish spray sealer. I antiqued the handles up a little from their original black. They were screwed into place after the
Meet a 6 1/2” x 13” French Country inspired tray. For decoration only.
I’ve been on a kick creating stencils lately of farm animals on my Silhouette machine. My latest project has become my favorite! 🙂 I also tried a new staining technique on this one. I will definitely be using this technique again.
I started with a plain new pine board. Danny, my husband and partner in our world of painting and creating, had previously cut a long pine board into 9 x 11 1/2” boards, sanding and rounding the edges. Some we will make into cutting boards, but this one I wanted to make a tray that could also hang up and be used as a wall decoration.
This worked well to darken the wood and bring out the grain. I would have liked for the wood to have been a little darker. When this dried, and after 3 coats, I still thought it would be a little darker but it was fine. I let the solution sit for 24 hours after I mixed it. The next time, I think I would let it sit several days.
After drying, the board was ready for the white wash, I mixed our brand of chalk-style paint Missouri Limestone Paint Company (MLPC) “January” with a little water, painted it on, then used a damp rag to rub it in and wipe it off. I let that dry well and it was ready to stencil.
I really liked the look of the end result – I will be using this technique on a small table top next.
I uploaded the SVG file to my Silhouette machine, traced it and cut it out, using Contact paper. I find this is a cheap and easy way to cut stencils. The Contact paper adheres nicely and is easy to remove. I also use clear Contact paper to transfer the stencil to my project. Press n Seal will also work as a transfer.
Then I did all the “weeding” (picking out the areas of vinyl) for the dark area of the skull. I stenciled those areas with MLPC “French Roast”, a dark brown.
For the flower area, I decided the best way to finish that would be to hand paint it, so that’s what I did. I am no artist, but I did learn to pretty much stay in the lines when coloring in elementary school. ☺️
The MLPC colors used: Crepe Myrtle, Farmhouse Green, Cornflower, Radio Flyer, Sour Green Apples, English Bluebells, and MO Buttercup.
Once all the flower area was dry I sealed front, back, and sides with Varathane water-based Crystal Clear Polyurethane in Satin Finish. I used 5 thin coats for durability. This piece may be used as a tray so I wanted it to stand up to hard use. (It was so pretty out I did the sealing on my deck. I had my book and coffee handy and read while my sealer dries. It only took about 10 minutes for each on this day.)
Now it was time for the handles. I remembered seeing a DIY on Pinterest for creating handles out of strips of leather. I happened to have the perfect belt made of genuine cowhide that I thought would be perfect! I had purchased it at Goodwill some time ago to create handles for a suitcase dresser, so used it for this project instead. I cut two strip of 8” each and we attached them to the edges of the top and bottom of the board using vintage wood screws.
This beautiful, floral cow skull tray/ wall hanging decoration is now complete! I absolutely love how it turned out!
Here are the other projects I have recently completed.
SharSum Paint 