Serving Tray Tutorial and a Hot Chocolate Station

Our very own HOT CHOCOLATE STATION!!!

BUT...

 Before this HOT CHOCOLATE STATION was possible I had to create the perfect serving tray.  I love trays.  They make nice little vignettes on your counter or tabletops when combined with a few accessories.  And it's so easy to move them to another location if you end up needing the space.  They can be coordinated with the colors and style of any room.  You may have seen my first serving tray here.  These trays started out life as unfinished oak cabinet doors.  We were lucky to find a bunch of these doors being sold at an amazing price and of course we snatched them up.  So many possibilities!

I decided to finish this tray in a distressed black, so I gave it a couple coats of semi-gloss black paint and let it dry.  Then I started my search for the perfect words or saying.  I quickly settled on Galatians 5:22-23.  Isn't it nice!?  So I went to work printing my version of the quote in several different fonts.  I decided against cutting these words on my Cricut...either in vinyl or card stock.  Because of the thin, small letters it would have been a disaster trying to cut, arrange and adhere all of these letters.  Instead I printed up my words in the text size I wanted, then I placed the words where I wanted them on my board:



I traced over them with a ball point pen and heavy pressure.  This left slight indentations of the words on the board.  SEE:

Please forgive the flash glare!  I wanted to make sure I got a shot of the words traced into the board.  You can see them if you look closely.

It took a few LONG minutes to get all of the words traced onto the board.  My hand was a bit achy from the pressure I was putting into it! 

At this point, I was going to get out a very fine point paintbrush and some white craft paint, but I remembered the white Pen-touch Fine Point Paint Pen I got for writing on photographs.  I think this was a lifesaver.  I'm having a hard time imagining painting all of these words with a tiny little paintbrush.  I only wish the Pen-touch could have written a tad bit finer.  Either that or I should have done a slightly larger text size!  Although I didn't want to have the text overpower the tray.

Here's what it looked like once all of the text had been gone over with the white paint pen:

Not perfect, but I'm going to rough it up a bit anyway.  I don't like having things looking too new and "perfect" around here.  With all of the kids and activities that go on, I would be a wreck worrying about things getting messed up!

You can believe that at this point my hand was EXTREMELY ACHY.  I do believe it was stuck in a writing position for the rest of the evening.  Sigh...the things we do for our creativity...

After the text was finished I pulled out one of those sanding sponges and distressed the corners, edges, and even roughed up the top a bit where the text is. 

All there was left to do was add my accessories and ingredients for the HOT COCOA STATION:
(The dishes and accessories were all taken from other areas in our home.  We were able to create this without the purchase of any new accessories.  Yay for shopping your own home!!!)

Cocoa, Mini Marshmallows and Candy Canes!  Mmmmm...

Then came some fun Christmas Mugs:

I added in my little Santa Bell...he just seemed to go here. 
I swear, you'd think Starbucks pays me!  Quite the opposite, I tell you.

Our Snowman Cookie Jar:

I LOVE this guy...he holds yummy surprises  :)

 So here is my newest tray, with an inspiring quote, finished with some distressing and white ceramic and silver pulls as handles.  All ready to offer up some hot chocolaty goodness:

My kids are sooo going to love this!  I can't wait for them to see it.

 

I cannot take complete credit for this idea.  Although the designing and creating of the serving tray was all my own and my accessories are completely different than any others I've seen, I was inspired by Someone Else's hot chocolate station.  Creating our very own HOT CHOCOLATE STATION has been on my to-do list since I spotted a darling little cocoa space created in the kitchen at Sweet Something Designs. You'll have to go take a look at Michelle's house all decked out for Christmas and see what else she's been up to.   Michelle has a beautiful design style and her blog is well worth the visit.  :)   Just click the link here  to open Sweet Something Designs in another window.  Maybe even leave her a message and tell her Sherry from Pondered Primed Perfected sent you.  ;)

 Enjoy a sweet treat with your loved ones today,
Sherry

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