The holiday season is just around the corner! Sometimes shopping for Christmas preparations can be overwhelming. This year you can shift from spending hours shopping in malls to crafting at home with your family.
We all look for activities to do during the Christmas holidays. Well, that’s it; read on to learn about the genuine and amazing technique to completely change your serving tray into a decoration masterpiece with a Christmas stencil.
Guess what? You can DIY such things to complete the look. We all have one or two serving trays ready to go into storage. Now with DIY, you can do ‘Bibidi Babdi Boo and voila, there you have changed an old scratched tray into a piece of art.
Amazon and Etsy have an amazing variety of Christmas stencils available within budget. The good thing about buying these stencils online is that their quality is guaranteed. You can learn this from other users’ reviews and make wise decisions.
You can use these Christmas stencils to give a personalized touch to your home or create a special gift for your loved one by staying within budget. We’ll show you how to reinvent your serving tray into a Christmas staple.
Materials you need for Christmas Stencil-ed tray
- Outdated Crate & Barrel Tray
- Benjamin Moore’s Navajo White (flat sheen)
- Anita’s All Purpose Acrylic Craft Paint – Kelly Green
- Modern Masters – Pale Gold Metallic Paint
- Martha Stewart – Blackened Iron Metallic Paint
- My Studio Acrylic Craft Paint – Red
- 4 Pc. Professional Stencil Brush Kit
- Christmas Ornaments Craft Stencil (size small)
First things first! Break the sheen of the old tray. Scrap it with sand all over to ensure no additional residues can disrupt the paint on the tray. 220-grit sandpaper is best for this purpose. A little sand over will freshen up your tray for new paint.
Next, closely brush away any dust resulting from the sanding of your tray. You can either brush it off with a brush or wipe it with denatured alcohol. The denatured alcohol not only removes the dust but can remove any stain of grease, oil, furniture polish or anything that is a burden to the old polishing.
Now it’s almost ready for the fresh base coat. Since it’s a festive DIY, you’d want your Christmas stencil to outshine. Therefore, it’s better to give your tray a neutral base coat. You can use a roller to pour over the base coat or a small paint brush for this coat; both will do well.
Next is the most important step, apply an adhesive spray to the back of the Christmas stencil. This will stick your stencil firmly to the stencil, not letting any paint go under the stencil.
Alert: These paints and sprays are harmful to inhale! You should use these paints or sprays in an open environment.
Make sure your stencil is sized enough to fit an actual pattern in the centre of the tray. Even if it is not going in the centre, it’s better to eye it in a placement where it suits the best. You’re the boss!
Time to Stencil
Well, here comes the real deal! You should have a perfect-size stencil brush that works the best on your Christmas stencil. Dip your brush into acrylic paint deep enough that it soaks well in the paint, then dab it on tissue paper. It will offload any extra paint onto a paper towel. There should be only enough paint on your brush.
You can design some beautiful motifs on your serving tray. Here’s a catch: to avoid inconvenient corners, you can cover them with masking tape so the brush cannot go to that corner.
In the end, just give a quote with waterproof polyurethane; two coats will be enough to seal your efforts. Finally, your tray is ready to dazzle your table!
Final Thoughts
You can use this tray to decorate any sweets station or just put it in a corner with heavy traffic. Whatever suits you but these DIY trays are not to be washed, so make sure no one spills over anything!
