Tray Makeover: Inspired by the Peacocks at West Elm

I am Pinterestless, having not yet taken that particular social media plunge. However, as I continue to sift through bookmark labels that I don’t understand (like “Jarrod Carved Wood Mirror Pendant Light Art” and “Suburban Home Ramsden Aqua”—are these reminding anyone else of the random keywords I mentioned here?) I am beginning to see the value of sorting these finds by category and picture, for us visual learners.

But Pinterestless or not, I can still participate in the Pinterest Challenge, right, since the general idea is to actually make something that you say you can make and have even gone so far as to bookmark it in your “I can make that” bookmarks folder? Hence this tray …

…inspired by the design on this West Elm soap dish that, forever ago, I mindlessly added to my disorganized list of someday projects bookmarked.

You see, the problem with having a fabric ottoman for a coffee table is that when you sit down with a beverage, you have no safe place to put it. And with three zany cats around (okay, two zany cats, and one cat that just likes to drink out of your glass of water and/or milk), nothing fragile/liquid is safe for any length of time.

To solve this problem, I first spray painted this beat up tray that I bought at Marshall’s a while ago. It was only $1.50, and I knew that it could potentially see better days.

Then, I drew the peacock image on a scrap piece of paper with pencil before tracing it with black marker for optimum scanning purposes.

After scanning my drawing, I imported it into Sure Cuts a Lot (for any and all Cricut owners—this program is a must-have), traced it, and set the Cricut to work cutting out the image on outdoor (and therefore waterproof) adhesive vinyl (using low pressure and blade depth of 6 so that it didn’t cut all the way through the vinyl lining).

The last step was to peel off the image and stick it on the tray. I decided to leave some of the pieces solid just to change it up a little bit.

At this point, I was pleased with my feathery bird, but not with the edges of the tray. Like I said, the tray was beat up, so it didn’t spray paint perfectly.

There are a few ways I could have fixed it, but I decided just to cut strips of the adhesive vinyl and trim the edges with that.

All done!

And oh, if you’re wondering about my choice of pink, A) it’s my favorite color, today and B) I’m on a quest to make that the accent color in the living room. So far, Rick isn’t resisting too much, but that might be because I let him buy expensive cookies at Wegmans.

Linking up to the Pinterest Challenge here, here, here, and here.