Serena & Lily Tray Dupe

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Hey friends! Hope you are doing well! Today I am excited because I have brought back the Look for Less Challenge and I cannot wait to share what I recreated.

This challenge has been a long time favorite on my channel and I have had to host it on and off for scheduling reasons, but I am bringing it back every other month this year. 

If you are not familiar with the Look for Less Challenge, it’s where I take items from a high end home decor store and recreate them for a whole lot less. But it’s not just me who tries to do this, I invite other YouTubers to the challenge as well. 

I create and entire playlist so that everyone has a chance to see what everyone came up with. It’s a lot of fun and it’s always great to see what everyone creates. 

Today I chose to recreate the Portland Bone Inlay Tray from Serena & Lily. It retails for a whopping $698.00! Ouch! That is a lot for something that is going to sit on a coffee table, but I guess there is a market for everything. 

Anyways, I LOVED it and I knew I just had to make my own. 

I came across this tray at my local Goodwill for only $3.99. It was originally from Crate & Barrel (it still had the sticker on the bottom). 

It was the perfect shape so I snagged it. I brought it home, cleaned it and sanded it down a bit. There were some chips in some areas and I wanted to smooth them out. I also wanted the paint to stick better since it was a really glossy finish. 

 

Afterwards, I got some DIY Paint in Sandy Blonde and White Swan. I wanted to lighten up the Sandy Blonde to look more of a “bone” color. 

Once I got the right color, I painted the entire tray with 2 coats. 

RELATED: Look for Less Pottery Barn Candleholders

Next I went to Cricut Design Studio and made the pattern that was on the tray from scratch. This part was a lot fun!

 

And, since I love this pattern so much, I also saved this as an SVG and saved it to my Free Printables Library. You can download it and use it on your own cutting machine if you wish to recreate this tray yourself! 

Just look for the icon in the library that looks like this:

So next it was time to add the stencil. One way I like to save money when using my Cricut is to save scraps of contact paper. I had some at home and used it for my stencil. It cuts just fine! 

I applied the pattern all over the tray and I added tape to the areas I did not want painted blue. This was a little time consuming, but with a little music, murder mystery podcast or your favorite show on Netflix, it can be a little more enjoyable. 

Anyone else listen to true crime stories while they craft? No… Just me?…. Okay…

I mixed up some chalk paint that I had on hand to get that same blue from the original tray. Then, I started to use a stencil brush to apply the blue color, but I ended up using a regular one to make the process go a little faster. 

After applying 2 coats of the custom blue chalk paint and letting it dry it was time to remove the stencil decals. 

Another very time consuming job, but as I kept going and that pattern got larger so did my heart!

Gasp!

It was looking gorgeous.

But as luck would have it, the contact paper removal didn’t go smoothly either. My weeding tool did remove some of the previous paint and I had to go back in and touch up certain areas, but it was worth it!

I sealed the tray with DIY Paint clear wax and that was it! I love this tray! That pattern looks so stunning. 

It’s the perfect addition to my coffee table especially for Spring. 

It’s also pretty large so it will come in handy as well. 

So how did I do?

Because I have everything on hand EXCEPT the tray, all I spent was $4 on this dupe. Of course, there was a lot of man hours, sweat and maybe even some tears, but I am definitely happy I pulled through and finished it!

And you know what? There are 2 other Serena & Lily Dupes in the image below. Can you guess which ones?

That vase is a dupe and this lamp is a dupe!

 

If you are curious how I made those, you can watch these dupes in the video below as well! 

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Let me know what you think of the tray! Are you a fan of these Look for Less dupes? 

Don’t forget to share this with your friends!

 

I will see you in the next one!

Until then… adios!