diy serving tray

It is the second week of January, and all (well, most) of the holiday decorations are packed away…except for all those beautiful Christmas cards.

I struggle with this every year…what to do with all those cards come January.  You see, I’m a lover of all things paper…cards, wrapping paper, invitations, calendars, stationery, napkins, gift tags, notepads, etc…so I have an extremely difficult time throwing all those lovely cards in the trash!

This year I decided to preserve our cards by decoupaging them on a serving tray.

To do this, you will need…

• tray (wood, plastic or melamine will work)
• mod podge
• sponge brush
• scissors
• Christmas cards, of course

I started by cutting out the parts of the cards that I wanted to use…pictures, words, graphic designs, phrases.  I wish I could have saved every part of them, but my serving tray just wasn’t large enough!!!

After the cutting was finished, I began laying out the pieces on the tray.  Once I had an idea of how I wanted to position them, I applied a thin coat of the mod podge to the tray using the sponge brush.

Then I placed the pieces on top of the mod podge.  Once I had one section the way I wanted it, I applied another coat of the mod podge on top of the pieces of cards.

I continued doing this until the entire area was filled.

Then I filled in the gaps between the pictures with the smaller pieces from the cards…the words and phrases fit perfectly for this purpose.

I still had more space to cover on my wood tray, so I decoupaged more pictures, words, and phrases on the sides and the bottom.

Once I had everything in place, I applied one last coat of the mod podge to make sure all the pieces had adhered to the tray.  Obviously, allow each side to completely dry before turning it over.

Now I have a wonderful remembrance of our 2015 Christmas cards from friends and family, and I can’t wait to use my new serving tray when entertaining!

Much better than throwing those cards in the trash!