A Wooden Serving Tray
For quite some time I had been looking for a serving tray. I would go to Target or other stores and think how it would be nice to have a serving tray, both for practical and decorative use. But I could never spend as much money as they seem to require, like something else in the budget seemed to always be calling dibs. Also, I wanted one to be wooden, not wonderfully modern pressboard. Call me picky.
So, one day while browsing a thrift store I came upon this snowman tray, screaming 1990s to anyone who walked by. It was obnoxious, but it was all wood, and I loved the curves. The best part, it was only $4! I knew milk paint could fix it up in no time at all.
I had some samples of Miss Mustard Seed’s milk paint in Shutter Gray and Grain Sack. I didn’t use any bonding agent, and was expecting it to chip a little. But the wood just drank the paint in like it had walked through a summer drought. For those of you who don’t know, milk paint is very unpredictable, which makes it a little risky if you are on the OCD side of things and want it to be predictable. It uses an old old formula that they have used for hundreds if years, so it looks more authentically vintage and does a glorious natural chippy look very often.
I started with a couple layers of Shutter Gray (the bright snowmen and holly took some work to overcome) and then did a thinner coat of grain sack (milk paint comes in powder form so you can adjust its thickness as well). I did some sanding with a fine sponge sander to expose the Shutter Gray, and a hint of the wood along the edges. As much as I liked it, it seemed kinda blah.
So I did what I’ve been doing on so many things lately, I added blue stripes. I used an acrylic paint, I believe it was Martha Stewart’s Blueberry. In all my faux grain sack stripe painting, I have never done the same combination of stripes yet. So that makes it fun.
I sealed the tray with hemp oil to protect it from spills of any kind. Now I can functionally serve with a tray or just pretty it up for a centerpiece. That’s a win win kind of project!
Thanks for stopping by.
Linking with: