Trays are very convenient items to have in the home. For example, they can be used to carry and serve snacks from the family room to the kitchen, or taken out to the patio to hold cold drinks in the summer. Trays are also perfect for serving breakfast in bed on special days. It can be a lot of fun to decorate trays. You can fix up old ones you already have or buy them inexpensively from flea markets and garage sales.
Paint is a great medium to use when you want to decorate trays. Just find the right kind of paint to use on the wood or metal of your tray. An easy way to decorate trays with paint is to use a background color first and then use a stencil and a contrasting color of paint. You can try more complex designs after that such as lettering and multi-colored designs.
To decorate trays with decoupage, you can use pieces you cut out from stylish paper napkins, gift wrap, old cookbooks or magazines. Fancy paper napkins often have artistic designs of food items such as herbs, fruit and olives. You can paint the tray and then do decoupage in areas or just cover the entire tray with your design. Be sure to coat all the pieces you cut out from all sources with decoupage medium as directed on the jar so that the colors and designs in your pieces stay vivid. You should also use a protective acrylic coating on the top of your decorated tray.
A photo collage is another great way to decorate trays. It's the perfect way to personalize a tray as a gift or to use up extra photos. Photo trays make excellent gifts for a bedridden person or anyone if you use photographs that have a special meaning to that person. For example, use pictures of all of a person's children to decorate trays for Mother's Day or Father's Day. You could paint the tray in stripes of color and alternate with rows of photos or just do an overall photo collage.