Thrift store tray

I think I've mentioned before that I have a thrift store/antique store nearby that is near and dear to my heart. There are several within a ten mile radius that I love and have had great successes in, but this one...sigh...it was love at first sight. I walked into the store this summer and literally stopped and stared, and then spent a half hour in only the first six-by-six front window of the place. The elderly lady who owns the place laughed at me when I told her I wanted it all. This place, needless to say, is awesome. I've gotten some big pieces there (my nightstand, my kitchen desk) and a lot of little pieces (several wooden trays, the wooden duck sitting on my entertainment center, baskets) and they have all been super reasonable. Truly antique pieces, some of which hundreds of years old, only for a couple hundred dollars instead of several thousand like in so many antique stores.

So obviously the subject of this post was purchased at that store. My favorite of all stores.

I bought this tray a while ago, maybe this fall sometime. You can't quite tell in this picture but there's a piece of glass in there as well. I can't remember exactly when, but I remember that I loved it immediately and I couldn't wait to spend some time on it making it beautiful...and I remember that it only cost me $12. Told you this place is great. It came home and put up on a shelf in the guest room closet so it wouldn't accidentally get bumped or cracked at some point, and waited for me to one day take it out and fix it up. That day was today.

Step one was removing the nails that were holding the glass in. We were a little scared of this step, since the glass is pretty fragile and we didn't want to crack it when the nails came out. Turns out, though, it was pretty easy.

The nail is super hard to see in that first picture, but basically a bunch of tiny nails were put into the frame and the glass was just resting in there, free to flop around. Obviously, this wasn't going to work long term. So the nails came out.

We needed a new way to secure the glass and whatever backing we used, so we got these picture frame clips from Michaels. The nice lady behind the custom framing desk gave them to us for free! They're the kind that swivel to secure the back of the photo frame. Same principle here. Just a simple screw head and you're good to go.

With the frame prepped, it was time to have fun with the inside. Because this frame would be sitting on my coffee table, and the frame is almost the same color as the table, I wanted something other than just the glass on the inside of the frame to help it pop. I didn't want this awesome tray blending in to the coffee table it's sitting on. So I thought for a while about what I wanted to use (scrapbook paper, fabric) and figured fabric would be the best way to go when I had a major light bulb a couple days ago. The hubs bought a new duvet set (with pillowcases) while we were dating that got replaced about six months after we got married. The duvet was recently passed on to my poor college-kid sister, but she didn't need the pillowcases. I went and grabbed one from the hall closet, put it under the frame, and did a happy dance. The kind of happy dance that is inspired by the word "free." I do love that word. Hubs cut the seams to give me one big piece of fabric, we ironed it smooth, and it was go time. Here's the fabric:

And here it is up close (and slightly darker than I intended):

It's a little bland, but it's the perfect color for the room and those ridges gave me some great ideas. One really one idea: stripes.

I used a foam brush, because I wanted the coverage to be a little bit washed out rather than harsh, and I also liked the control having such a long straight edge would give me when following the ridges on the fabric.

I started with white. I just traced ridge lines on the fabric, in a random sequence. I really didn't want it to be or look like a pattern, so I didn't think too hard about it and instead just went for it.

I looked at the white for a minute to make sure I wasn't sold on it as is, and then decided some gray would be a good idea. The grays and tans and whites in our stone fireplace were the inspiration, by the way. I liked the idea of pulling those colors in, especially since this tray will be sitting across the room from the fireplace.

I went with much wider gray stripes, filling in the space between ridges this time rather than tracing the ridges themselves. Wherever I had left two ridges empty in between white stripes, I filled it in with gray.

Now for the back. I mentioned that the glass wobbled a lot inside there originally, because the depth of the tray was much deeper than the glass itself. I didn't want that to be the case anymore, so I cut out some matte board - like for behind pictures in a frame - to the size of the frame. This way I would get some added thickness as well as a hard back for the fabric. It wasn't thick enough, though, and still had some wiggle room. So I snagged some soft shelf liner from the garage and needed two layers of that before everything fit snugly inside the frame.

So as a recap, that's a layer of matte board, two layers of shelf liner, one layer of (very thin) fabric, and then the glass. No more wiggles or wobbles!

We did need to secure the fabric to the matte board and shelf liner, though, which was the trickiest part of this project. The stripes required some extra care, since we really had to make sure everything was straight and not crooked at all. Thankfully, my incredible former military, slightly OCD husband was there to help. And he did a great job.

Yeah, that's duct tape. There's not too many products better, and you know it.

With everything taped securely and tightly, we put it in the frame (after cleaning the glass), closed the clips, and we were only one step from being done. We didn't want the wood frame sitting directly on the coffee table, but the need for some kind of padding was made definite when the screw heads on the little clips stuck up pretty far. Meaning: it wouldn't be the wood frame sitting on the coffee table, it would be the metal screw heads sitting on the table with the frame floating above. No bueno. So I retrieved some bottom-of-the-chair pads from my desk, put one on each corner, and the problem was solved.

And that's it!

There are a handful of brown spots on the glass that wouldn't come off with cleaner, but I'm okay with it. It adds character to the piece, I think.

And that's it! I'll add some kind of decorative something to the tray soon, but I'm in love with the finished product. The painted lines aren't perfect up close (from the couch it looks great) but it's the kind of handmade look I was going for. I'm excited to layer some things on top but I think it's great on its own for now too. Because it's an older piece and the handles aren't the most sturdy, I won't use it for anything other than just looking pretty. But look pretty it does.

My favorite part about this project is its cost. Let's do a quick money recap: the matte board was from my craft closet, the shelf liner was from my garage, the fabric was a pillowcase from my hall closet, the paint was from my craft room, the frame clips were free from the nice lady at Michaels, and the tray was $12 from my favorite thrift/antique store. That means the total cost of this little DIY project was $12! Need I say one more time that I love using what I already have? I'm telling you, guys. You'd really be surprised with what you have to work with.