Look for Less Challenge DIY Wood Tray

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Look for Less Challenge DIY Wood Tray

Happy Hump Day!

Today is the Look for Less and I am excited to share my take on a very, very, VERY expensive Neiman Marcus tray.

This project was actually chosen by my subscribers for this month’s Look for Less Challenge and I was happy to take on the task. The original inspiration was from Neiman Marcus at a whopping $275!

At that price, it’s a no go for me.

I could buy a whole couch for that!

And just in case you don’t believe the price, here is the proof below. ?

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I believed I had just the items to recreate this as well.

I know you have seen the tumbling tower blocks at Dollar Tree. Many people use them to make DIY’s out of them. And while I have used them in the past as part of DIYs, this was my first time attempting a project made completely out of them.

I used 6 boxes total.

First, I painted some of them white. I used the color Vintage White by Folkart.

I apologize for the blurry image, but I wanted to make sure you saw that for this paint application (if you attempted to recreate this), you will need to paint the wider side of each wood piece for this part.

Okay, so after that… I took a frame that I already had from Dollar Tree (which I had made into another project, but it kinda flopped) and began hot gluing the pieces onto the frame, making sure that I kept a white-wood-white-wood pattern.

Because the wood pieces were longer that the frame, some of them stuck out on either side.

You can always see the tutorial here as well:

I worked my way down the frame. I used school glue to adhere them to each other while at the same time using hot glue to adhere them to them frame. I felt this worked best and the school glue acted like wood glue and bonded the pieces well together.

Once that was done, I sanded the top surface to smooth everything out and then repainted a couple of the blocks that lost their pigment due to the sanding.

After that it was time to add the sides, but first I needed to paint some more wood pieces. This time, I needed to paint the narrower sides and one end of each.

See image below….

Then, I glued them side by side following the same pattern. I glued the side walls together with school glue and then once they were dry, I hot glued the entire piece to each of the 4 sides of the tray.

I am not going to lie, this took patience!

The tray was taking shape, but it needed something else.

The original had handles so I took a small dowel left over from another project and I cut several pieces with my favorite mini saw kit.

I painted them with my Brushed Metal paint in Bronze and then once dry, I hot-glued the on as well.

Finally, I added one coat of Mod Podge in a Matte finish and I was done!

This dupe cost me $7 because I had pretty much everything, but if you need to purchase the items for it all, then it would cost anywhere from $10 to $12.

Sill not bad, I think!

And while the handles aren’t functional, the tray is. And it’s pretty sturdy.

Let me know what you think below!