How To Make a DIY Tray

So I was at Target the other day…

Do you have stories that start out that way? My poor husband dreads it every time I start a sentence with me being at Target.

Target is like my kryptonite. Have you seen that meme that says something along the lines of, “You don’t tell Target what you want to buy, Target tells you”? Anyway, that’s basically my life.

I was at Target the other day, cruising the value section that lives right up front next to the entrance, and I found this really cute wooden picture frame for $3. It wasn’t exactly a picture frame - it didn’t have any glass and it was one solid piece of wood, but it did have mounting hardware on the back. So I think the idea was to paint some sort of design or saying in the middle and hang it up for a farmhouse sign.

Anyway, it looked more like a tray to me, and I thought, I could make this into a tray for my bathroom counter. So that’s what I did. And now I’m going to show you how to make a DIY tray for your home as well!

How To Make a DIY Tray... Jennifer Zimmerman | DIY & Lifestyle

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Step 1: Drill holes for the handles

It’s up to you if you want to start with this step or paint first, but I find it easier to start by drilling the holes for the twine handles before painting. That way, when you paint, some of the paint will go into the holes. It honestly doesn’t matter because the holes will be covered by your twine handles anyway, but I think it’s easier to start here.

Use your ruler to measure your sides and use a pencil to mark where you want your handles to be. If you’ve read any of my other posts, you know that I am horrible at measuring, so I’m not going to give any advice here. Just do your best to measure the middle and decide where you want the handles to sit.

Once you know where you want your handles to be, place a bit of painters tape over the area you will be drilling. This tip is helpful because it helps prevent the wood from splitting when you drill your holes.

Next, determine the size drill bit you need. I placed my twine next to the different bit sizes and chose a size that was about the same diameter as my twine. The first holes I drilled were too small, so I ended up going up a size, but you want to err on the side of too small because you don’t want the knots to slip through your holes and your handles to fall apart.

Drill your holes, but don’t add in the twine at this point.

If you look at my “supplies you’ll need” picture, you’ll notice that I originally posted blue and black paint. My original idea was to paint the tray blue and add in black accents, but after painting the blue, I thought the white would look better with my neutral décor, so I went that direction instead.

First, paint the entire frame in your base color. In this case, I painted the whole frame blue. Wait for it to dry (or use a hairdryer to speed up the process if you’re impatient like me) before adding in your accent color.

Next, dip your paint brush in your accent color (white for mine) and dab it on a paper towel to remove some of the paint. You want to use a dry brush technique to prevent too much of your accent color from covering your base color.

I didn’t blot off the paint enough, so my initial strokes were too heavy handed, so I used a paper towel to wipe off some of the paint after I applied it.

After all was said and done, I still applied too much white to the tray, so I went back with more blue and touched up some of the areas that had too much white.

Once I was satisfied with the color and accents, I again used my hairdryer to speed up the drying process before moving onto the next step.

Step 3: Cut your twine

Now it’s time to figure out your twine handles.
The length of twine you need is going to depend on how large you want your handles to be and how far apart your holes are.

There was some trial and error here, but I determined that about 8 inches of twine was going to be sufficient for my needs. My drill holes are about 2-1/4 inches apart, and I wanted enough play to easily knot the ends of my twine to attach it to the tray, but I didn’t want the handles to stick out too far from the tray.

It’s better to cut your twine too long because you can always trim off the excess if you want them to be shorter.

Once you get the twine threaded through both sides, knot each end and apply a small dab of hot glue behind the knot. Tug the knot back toward the hole and make sure it feels snug and not as if it’s going to pull out of the hole.

A word of caution here: I don’t know how strong these handles are, so please don’t load up a whole bunch of weight onto your tray and try to carry it by the handles. That could end in disaster, so I would recommend carrying your tray by the sides or underneath. Just use your best judgment here!