DIY WOOD TRAY DOLLAR TREE | Look for Less Challenge February 2020 | Dollar Tree Serving Tray

Hello everyone, this is delicious, your lucky night next door, welcome back today. We have a month of February. Oh,

look

for

less

if you're not familiar with the for

less

look

. It's a

challenge

where we take a piece of high-end home decor, something that's a bit. a little out of our budget and we recreated it for less now for this month. I gave them three options to choose what I should recreate, honestly it was neck and neck between A and C, almost everyone wanted A from the beginning and then C started. I was getting a lot of requests, so I decided I was going to do both.

However, for this video I will do an and an for the beautiful herb pot. I'll bring it to you this Monday, so be sure. Stick around so you can see how I recreated it too after this video. Be sure to head over to Kat, according to Kat, who was my co-host for this month's Look for less

challenge

and check out what she recreated for this. First, let's recreate that Neiman Marcus

tray

that was at an incredible price. The bone

tray

appears to be made of individual pieces and I thought it would be a great opportunity to use a small tower set that you can find at Dollar Tree for this.

To give it the same look as the original tray, I needed to paint some of these little blocks and used some vintage white acrylic paint. Now I will paint these blocks in two different ways, the first will be where we paint. them on the larger side as you see what I'm doing here now you want to paint a lot of them so this is going to take a little bit of time just make sure you have something you like listening to Anna so you know I used six of These little games now, since it was my first time trying a tray like this, I had to figure out what the best steps would be to do it right, so at first I started listening to them and next to each other, a white one. one white one bare

wood

en one and I basically used school glue for this this is the way I needed to attach them however there was nothing on the back to give it a little extra support so everything would stay together and as you can See, there were a lot of these little blocks to put together, so I had to think of something to give it a little more stability, so I grabbed this frame I had made for another video I posted earlier. but the small cross I had didn't survive my children, so I decided to use it as a base and support, so I started adhering the little pieces of

wood

with a hot glue gun to add them to the frame later. my first row was stuck.

I went ahead and added all the pieces I had previously glued to the frame and then once I adhered them, I started adding them individually once again. I noticed that the school glue was actually working like a wood glue. with small pieces of wood so what I did was use the school glue to adhere them together but the hot glue to adhere it to the tray I continued this along the small frame and made sure to keep the pattern white wood white wood a Once they were all adhered I gave the top a light sanding to smooth out a couple of rough edges and then I had to go back and touch up a couple of the whites that had lost some of their pigment, so it was time to do that. the perimeter of the tray now this is where the second type of application is applied this time you are going to paint each of the small pieces on the narrower sides as well as one of the ends now some of them are completely painted as you can see but that It's because I used some of the ones I was painting for the bottom of the tray that were left over.

I went ahead and used them for the perimeter but as you can see all you need to do are the narrower sides and one of the ends. After everyone is done and dried, you start listening to them from side to side. I would go together to the largest places and repeat the same pattern of white wood, white wood, from time to time I would place them right against the shop to see how many more. I needed to add more after the four sides were done and before adhering them to the tray I took some sandpaper and sanded the four edges as unfortunately they are not all the same size after completing it it was time to adhere the sides and I used the hot glue gun for this.

I try to make sure the tray is as tight as possible leaving the tiniest scientific gaps where I could after adhering the sides, then it was time to create the little handles that the original tray had. I had and only use a dowel I had on hand left over from a previous project, while the tray is functional. These handles are for display only. I needed a total of two larger and four smaller pieces and I used my trusty mini miter. saw kit that you know I love. I used hot glue to hold the pieces together and then I took some of my metallic brush paint in bronze and gave them a couple coats and while they were drawing I took some Mod Podge that I had on hand and gave everything a thick coat to seal the entire train.

I use the matte finish because that's what I had, but you can always use a glossy version or Mod Podge also helped fill in some of those gaps that were there. between the little blocks and then the final step was to adhere the little faux handles. I made sure to cut off any excess hot glue that might have leaked out, guys this little swap was such a difficult task there were so many steps involved and then I gave it a couple of touch ups and finally here is my finished look for Less Neiman Marcus Trey, okay, so let's see how I did it.

The original Neiman Marcus tray cost $275. I used six of those little sets of blocks and kept going. and I included the little frame I had bought earlier at Dollar Tree for a

dollar

, so it was about seven

dollar

s because I had everything else on hand; However, even if you needed to buy the dowel and a couple of paints, you would still do this. between ten and twelve dollars total, so I think it's still a great deal and although mine is a little smaller and lighter in color, I still think I managed to capture the original Less look.

Be sure to give this video some love with a thumbs up if you enjoyed this monthly challenge and let me know what you think of the tray in the comments below. Thank you so much Kat for joining me as co-host of this month's look for Less. Don't forget to go through her channel and leave her. Know that Athena's scoldings have been sent to you and I can't wait to see what everyone else has created for this month's challenge. Do not forget. On Monday I will share with you how I recreated that wall piece for her herb garden and I will see you in the next video until then you have