Turn a Clearance Tray into Christmas Decor

Hello Sweet Friends,
For today’s DIY project, we will turn a clearance tray into Christmas decor by using a December calendar image. The image I am using came from the 2023 Seasons of Joy calendar by Jennifer Pugh.

As you may remember, I showed you a Christmas-in-July DIY with the same image, where I framed it and added some embellishments. But I just wasn’t completely happy with it. (Plus I wanted to use the frame for a different project.) So I decided to get creative with the cute Christmas cookie image again.

Dollar General had some clearance trays from their spring line, so I thought it would be the perfect thing for this DIY project. So follow along to see how EASY it was to make over. And see how different the tray looks NOW!

Supply list

Dollar General clearance tray
Calendar image
Waverly chalk paint, color plaster
Mod Podge
iridescent glitter
red/white cording
glue gun
ribbon, Christmas embellishment

The first step in this project was to paint the tray with Waverly chalk paint in the color plaster. But any white acrylic paint would have worked. It took two coats of paint with dry time in between.

Then I cut the calendar image down to fit the tray. This meant that I had to cut the black and white checked part from the bottom of the image.

The image fit pretty well but was still a little narrow, but the background matched with the paint color of the tray so I thought it looked GOOD!

For the next step, I applied a coat of Mod Podge to the tray, added the calendar image, and let it dry. Then cut a piece of red and white cord long enough to encircle the entire image.

Using a hot glue gun, I added the cording around the image. I started at the top of the tray because I knew the frayed ends of the cording would be covered.

So I cheated on this next step a little bit; by using the ribbon and embellishment from my previous DIY. I was able to remove it from the glass fairly easily, then glued it to the top of the tray, covering up the frayed ends of the cording.