365 Crafts: Day One Tray One

And so it begins! Today I kick off my somewhat insane plan to craft something new every day.  To start off with, here are my "rules", such as they are:

1. I have to try to upcycle as often as possible and use things I have or things I find on the cheap (except when the craft of the day is cooking or something like that, obviously)
2. Some things CAN be made ahead of time, such as things involving resin and whatnot, because my goal is to finish a craft each day, plus I never can mix up just enough resin for say, two bottle caps.
3. Waste as little during the process as possible, including both materials AND money.
4. Keep a running total of what I spent throughout this process...which might actually end up depressing me later on.
5. Think in terms of gifts, when possible, because if not I am going to have 365 whatnots lying around...

Vague rules, really more like guidelines, and I imagine that the trouble I will really have will be keeping track of purchases.  I am not a very good keeper of the receipts you see. I digress, and on we go to today's craft of awesomeness!

Recently we had a deck built outside and the builder left all of the materials and scraps behind in a haphazard mess in our backyard...joy.  Regardless, in a lemons to lemonade moment I was staring at some spindle remnants in a bin we had put things in and realized that so many uniform pieces could work to my advantage.  So I called dibs on the bin for the next week or so.  I was messing around outside with the scraps and determined that I could easily make a tray.

I say easily because this kid is not skilled with a skill saw and probably needs a college course on power tools.  They are just not my forte.

Without further ado, the materials and process to my traymaking:



Materials:
-16 Spindle Pieces (these were 14 3/16 inches long, but as long as all of yours are the exact same size you can make a tray any size you want).  You could also make it out of other sizes of lumber (spindles are 2x2) to come out with different results (1x1s may make a lighter tray) and if you are good with a saw yours doesn't have to be square.   (so much for without further ado...)
-1 liquid nails cannister and gun
- 2 drawer pulls, 4 screws (only if you want handles)

Making the tray (the Jenna way) is super simple, you just run a bead of liquid nails down the side of the pieces and glue them together.  I found that laying my right outside piece down first and then running the bead on the right side of the following pieces and working my way to the left worked out really well for me.

I checked the pieces as I went to make sure that they were still lining up so that my top and bottom pieces would go on easily. 

All four sides of each piece were a little different, so I suggest really looking at the pieces you have so that you can make sure you end up with a look you are happy with. 

Or if you dont care for color variance, slap em down and call it a day!

I also made this little guy, using 12 pieces that were 5 1/4 inches long and 4 of the 14 3/16 pieces.  Again, if you are a skilled power tool users (or have someone around who is) then you can make your tray any size your heart desires.

I decided to put the handles on this little guy.  Let me take a moment to plead to my beloved audience to heed this warning:

For the love of all that is good in the world, PUT YOUR HANDLES ON FIRST or be prepared to wait until the thing completely dries.  Because let me tell you, putting them on before the liquid nails is set directly results in using copious amounts more of it.  And it is annoying.  

But being the impatient soul I am I tried to put them on first and that was just not workin'. 

Here are my finished lovelies.  That is right, I saved 48 pieces of scrap from getting tossed :)! And only had to spend about 4 bucks to purchase a few handles, as everything else we had on hand. 

If you are going to use your tray for daily things or heavy things and are going to move it a lot, you may consider putting a few screws in it for extra support.

I really don't think it is necessary, as we currently have a mail box that we put up with liquid nails and it is holding just fine, even through this heat.  But still, I am very much a better safe than sorry type of human.

You could stain these if you like, I personally like the interesting colors and striations in the wood (ex geology nerd, don't judge me).  You could also add in another few pieces and make divided trays if that's your fancy. 

One of these lucky trays will earn a home on my super cool pallet table that a friend of a friend is (hopefully still) building me, and I am sure the other two will find homes as well.

I think they would be great outdoors to set small pots in like an herb garden, could make cute "spa" arrangement bases, and would really just be cute anywhere.  On a scale of 1 to 5 of how happy I am with this venture, I give it a solid 5.

Totals:
Craft: 1 of 365
Dollars Spent: $4