Tray Transformation

Since I moved everything around for Christmas my coffee table became very bare. I had been looking for a large tray but everything I found that I liked was so expensive. Then one day I was in Home Goods shopping for someone else when I found it, a large tray for only $29.99. YES!!! Now it didn't look like this originally so I'm going to show you how I did it and what it looked like before...

It was a very bright red. I liked the idea of red so I toned it down with some brown mixed in and then rubbed a walnut stain over it to darken it even more...

after the stain treatment

adding the stencil with the same dark walnut stain

I brushed a little turquiose on top.

The almost completed tray. I just need to add the handles on each end...

Now I know what you're thinking..."That doesn't look anything like the cream tray in the first picture."You're right. I decided that the red was too dark for the dark coffee table so I started all over again. Yep, that's how I roll. This is the great thing about paint. You can't screw it up. Just repaint it. It's as easy as that.

I added the handles, painted my trim color, Monarch Sawyer's fence (don't you love that name for a paint) lightly rubbed on the walnut stain to get in the grooves and cracks, and started over with the stencil.

For this two tone effect, I stenciled first with the dark stain and them moved the stencil over slightly adding the white to give a shadow effect.

So, unintentionally, I came up with a blog post about how you can transform a piece 2 ways for 2 different looks and maybe proved a point that if you don't like the color of something at first, you can change it easily.

A lot of what I do, not only in painting, but in decorating and blogging as well is trial and error. So don't be afraid to try something new. The worst thing you can do is screw it up and have to start over. Twice the fun!!!



The (really this time) completed project ~

shared with ~

Jenniferrizzo.com