Triple T. The Tiered Tray: Why you need one and what to do with it.

Tip & Trick Tuesday

So time for another Tip and Trick Tuesday. This week, I’ll talk about tiered tray decor. It’s fairly new decorating trend where you get a stand, typically with 2 or 3 levels of shelves, for a lack of a better word, and decorate it with crafted items, tchotchkes, signs, beads and other things, to make a nice piece for your home. Let’s first take a look at the tray itself.

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Tray Types

There are so many types of stands to choose from; metal, wood, porcelain, galvanized, with sides and without. Some are more like cupcake stands with flat shelves, while others have sides and partitions, like a Lazy Susan type carousel for storing parts. My favorite place to nab a cheap two tiered metal tray is, of course, the Dollar Spot at Target! Yup. Two tiered metal trays, with sides and a handle! There are plenty that can be had elsewhere online, like Amazon, in a wide variety of styles and prices. This tray from Amazon is one of my fave trays to get for a decent piece .

Tiered Tray

TIP: take a look at the dimensions of the bottom tier so you know it will fit the space you have for it. This one is about 14″ on the bottom. The Target ones are a bit smaller and metal, like this:

Tiered Tray Decor

Decorate How to

Decorate for time of year. So now you have your tray, but what do you do with it? Well, right now it’s Spring approaching Summer, so gather items appropriate for the season. Pull out your appropriate Chalk Couture transfers and then look for some things to go along with that. A little bit ago, I did a Bee themed 2 tiered tray. Just in time for spring too. Since bees and honey are yellow and brown or black, I went with those colors and found in my travels, some picks and other little items like a little honey dipper and crocheted bee and flower. How cute is that! And, so cool, cos I auctioned this off at my Chalk-A-Thon for Watts of Love this past weekend and the winning bid was $325!!

Here’s another one I did for Fall. It looked great on the table in my entryway this past Fall.

Fall Tiered Tray Decor

Decorate Monthly. So another idea is to change your tray each month. If a holiday isn’t there and you’re in between seasons, or just because. Off the top of my head, I could see plenty of traditional ones as well as some unusual off the wall ones. How about one for Mother’s Day or Father’s Day. Another good one would be celebrating the opening of baseball season. Or Football season. There are definitely Chalk Couture transfers for all this. Some other ones could include National Pet Day, Back To School, Wedding Countdown… so many to choose from.

Decorate for a holiday(s). Here’s another quick and easy way to come up with decor ideas… decorate for the upcoming holiday. Holiday decorations are everywhere – dollar store, Target, craft store, Walmart… and holiday themed Chalk Couture transfers are aplenty. Here’s one of my favorites: Valentine’s Day trays.

Valentine's Day Tiered Tray Decor

There are probably at least 3 transfers used in this project. Some are holiday ones, some are just parts of other transfers I repurposed for this theme. The rest of it was probably acquired from the Dollar Spot at Target or !TIP! by scooping all sorts of clearance items up after that specific holiday is over. That stuff can sometimes be ALMOST free if you hit it right. The downside is storage space. But, as we know, there’s always room for more craft stuff.

Here is my masterpiece. I did Patriotic tiered tray decor. America will soon be celebrating Memorial Day and Independence Day in July. This will be perfect for either holiday. I used around 4 different transfers in this project as well as some Chalk Couture surfaces and some found objects from my craft stash. I have a whole series of videos you can watch to see how this project developed.

PART 1
PART 2
PART 3
FINAL BUILD

I used too many items to list here, but if you click through to youtube and watch, there is a paragraph underneath each video describing what was used. Here’s the final tiered tray and I just love it.

Now that you’re all inspired, get out there and get started on your own tiered tray decor. You can do it!

Later this week I’ll do more Patriotic decor projects.

Stay safe and Chalk On!

 

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