Guest Tutorial With My Sis :)

I have never had anyone guest blog over here before!  But I knew I wanted to someday, and I also knew the first person I’d ask is my big sis (by 2 years), Rachelle.  She is SO creative.  You should see her house.  It’s full of awesome things she’s made, including refinishing furniture, decorations, crafts, and sewing.  She is an amazing sewist.  She has 3 girls that she sews the most beautiful dresses for.  And I love her.   I have another sister whom I love (of course) who is also amazing, but with 6 kiddos she is rather busy!  Maybe someday she can come visit here ;) . 

Thank you so much for posting this awesome tutorial, Rachelle!  Take it away! 

(The tray she used was thrifted for $3.00 )

Hello squeezies (Lemon Squeezy readers)!

Christie invited me to do a guest post. I’ve never done this before, so I hope I don’t screw anything up!

Let me introduce myself… my name is Rachelle. I’m a SAHM (stay-at-home-mom) and a wedding photographer. I’ve been blessed with a wonderful husband who supports me in all my craziness, and I have 3 beautiful daughters!

Christie is my little sister and even though I could totally embarrass her with stories of our childhood, I’ll leave that for a later time! I will say this… Christie is super-uber talented and so creative! She’s a wonderful sister… and her kids are so stinkin’ cute!

Now that we’re done with the pleasantries, let’s get on with the tutorial!

Disclaimer: I’ve never done a tutorial before and I’m sure I missed pictures of several steps. I’ll try to be thorough in my instructions!

I originally got this idea from another blogger, but can’t seem to recall exactly where. Sorry.

Into this!

What you’ll need:
-tray
-primer (optional)
-spray paint (color of your choice)
-scrapbook papers
-pencil
-scissors
-scrap paper
-Mod Podge
-sponge brush
-container, cups, anything circular
-tape

Since the tray was so dark, I decided to prime it first. Getting it a lighter color so I wouldn’t have to worry about the darkness showing through.

Then spray on a couple of coats of paint!

Next comes the fun part! Get cups, containers, canisters… anything circular!

Using scrap paper, trace around all the different sizes and label the circles with what you used to make them. That way you’ll be able to find that item again later on when you’re cutting out the scrapbook paper.

To make the tree trunks, take the scrap paper, cut out varying lengths of triangles. Tape smaller triangles to longer ones to create branches.

Once you have all your pieces arranged on your tray, how you like, get your scrapbook paper and start tracing and cutting!

With a pencil, I marked the bottom and one side of each circle, so I would know where to place it. With the Mod Podge and sponge brush, apply each circle first (unless you want the tree trunk to go under the circle).

Once all the circles are glued down, trace the tree trunks onto the scrapbook paper, cut out and glue down.

Once everything is glued down, apply one or two top coats of Mod Podge across the entire flat surface of the tray, and you’re done! With regular Mod Podge, you shouldn’t wipe it down with anything wet. If you plan on using it to hold beverages or food, you might want to use the Hard Coat Mod Podge. Just follow the direction on the bottle.

And just for fun, a close up!

Another cute idea, instead of doing circles, you could do squares with rounded corners, or even triangles with rounded corners. Unfortunately, I thought of the squares too late to do them on this tray, but I will definitely be doing squares for another project.

Enjoy!

Thank you Rachelle!  You are awesome.  She gave me the tray and it matches perfectly in B’s room.  I love it! 

Now, “squeezies”, as my sister nicknamed you (which totally made me laugh), if you have a second, show my sister some love and leave a comment here!  She only has a personal family blog right now, but she said maybe someday she’ll have a crafting blog.