Fabric-Covered Metal Tray

Todays project inspiration also came from something that showed up on Pinterest. It is a Martha Stewart project from the craft section of her website.

Finding the right sized metal tray was proving to be a bit of a challenge on other shopping days, and there was NO way I was going to purchase a brand new cookie sheet for this purpose. 

Enter: the Lafayette Indoor Flea Market. 

Ali & I met at the flea market, and she showed me around the place. Glorious. It was full of treasures like this:

"Clouds of Cabbage" (Hopefully for a...leaky.... Cabbage Patch doll? Gack.)

Who doesn't need about 5 alien plush faces?

Size 50 knitting needles

Amazing art work.

But lucky for us, we also found these treasures for $1 a piece:

14x9" metal trays

And after a trip to Hobby Lobby to pick out some fabric (we purchased about 1/2 a yard for each tray), we got right to work.

Here's what we used:

• Metal tray of your choice
• Fabric (about 1/2 yard, depending on the size of the tray)
• Spray adhesive
• Enough felt to fit the back of the tray

Here's what we did:

Our first step was to iron creases out of the fabric. I know... I hate ironing, too, but it was worth it.

Cut the fabric leaving enough to wrap around the edges of the tray.

Following the instructions on the can, cover the top of the tray with spray adhesive.

 Working from the middle out, press the fabric down and into the corners and smooth any wrinkles/bubbles.

 Flip tray over, spray the back with the adhesive, and pull the fabric tightly over to the backside.

You'll get a kind of bunchy situation like this:

We were temporarily stumped, wondering how we were supposed to make this bunch of fabric both adhere AND lay flat. So, after some brainstorming we figured to run the edge of the scissors along the lip of the tray, which resulted in a very clean line along the edge. (A box cutter would work well here, too).

Since we had already sprayed and wrapped, the fabric still stuck to the lip after we ran the blade along the edge. The excess fabric just pulls right off. The tray was sticky where that fabric was, but it was nothing a little Goo Gone or fingernail polish remover didn't tackle.

 I had to double-wrap mine, since my fabric was light enough to let the printed picture on the tray show through. This was very much a pain-in-the-rear. I would recommend painting over any pattern on the tray or covering the main image with a thick, neutral paper so that you can do a single wrap with the fabric.

Finally, cut-to-fit the felt and adhere it to the back of the tray.

And Presto Change-o!
Lovely new custom tray to hold remotes, coasters, vases, knick-knacks, whatever.

I would give this project 4.5 out of 5 stars. After we gathered all of our supplies, it took about 45-60 minutes to complete. It was easy, and the finished project was very well worth it. A lot of bang for your buck, if you will. The downsides were using the spray adhesive, which got EVERYTHING very sticky, almost to the point where I couldn't use my fingers any longer. But, like I mentioned, it cleaned up pretty easily. Overall it was really fun!