Joan Switalski is our Guest Poster for this post. This document tray is so pretty and yet looks easy to do! You can visit Joan’s blog here to see more of her work plus read her bio below:
"About me, I am a proud Filipina, born and raised in the Philippines. I’m just a regular girl who likes to do crafts. Aside from scrapbooking, I also like to do cross-stitch, crochet, stained glass and other paper crafts like crad making. I also tend to incorporate these hobbies with each other. I like to spend my time in my craft room, which I call my planet. We just moved to the USA last year, and before that we lived in Japan for 5 years. We travelled a lot and these experiences affect the way I do my crafts."
Altered Document Tray
My new job inspired me to do this project. I just can’t stand the plain look of office supplies on my desk. So I decided to alter this document tray I bought for only $3.
The materials I recommend are as follows:
- document tray
- choice of printed paper
- strong bond adhesive
- embellishments: 2 pieces of flowers, 2 small bows, ribbon, 2 big brads
- 2 big buttons, preferrably not flat
- Pop Up Glue Dots
- Mini Glue Dots
- black ink pad
First, I applied black tint with my Versa Magic Black Dew Drop ink on all edges of my document tray. I wanted to give the tray a "distressed look".
Then with a ruler, I measure each side of the tray, inside and out. After that, I cut background paper of my choice 1/4" smaller than each measurement, so that when I adhere each piece of paper, the inked black edges can still be seen.
Then, I ink the edges of each piece of paper so they will blend in with the inked black edges of the tray. Then, I apply adhesive in the back of each paper. In this step, I made sure that the adhesive is applied right up to the the edge of the paper to prevent "curling" as the tray gets old from frequent use.
With this project, I used different patterns of paper with the same color scheme. For the next step, I wanted to adhere flowers in the front of my tray. I wanted the flowers to be secure, so I decided to attach them with brads. With my Crop-A-Dile, I punched 2 holes in the front. But before attaching my flowers, I attached a good length of ribboon, starting from my freshly punched holes,
then around the corner to each side.
then around the corner to each side.Then, I positioned my flowers and adhered them with brads. By this point, the flower has covered one end of each ribbon strip. After securing my brads from the inside, I adhere Pop Up Glue Dots, then I covered them with buttons. Meanwhile on the other end of each ribbon,
I adhere a bow with Mini Glue Dots.
I adhere a bow with Mini Glue Dots.Here’s another paper tray that I altered a little bit. On a strip of black corrugated card stock, I just spelled my name with Provo Craft metal alpha tags (I actually cut off the hole because I didn’t want the alphas to look like tags),
and adhered some clear flower sequins for more dimension.
and adhered some clear flower sequins for more dimension.
Love it!!