Chalkboard Tray Thank You Gift

My FRG leader is moving away soon. She is always making these cute gifts to thank people for volunteering, so my friend Lorie and I wanted to make something to thank her for all of the work she’s done, and for being such a good friend. We made her a chalkboard tray with a little bow. Making the tray itself was really easy. I thrifted the tray itself for about a dollar, and bought some chalkboard paint from Michael’s for around $5.

Tutorial:

• Wash and dry the tray
• Use a sponge brush to apply the chalkboard paint to the flat, inside part of the tray. Go slowly. Apply thin layers, and let the layers completely dry in between. If you get impatient, you’ll end up accidentally chipping off paint when you apply the next layer. This was the hardest part for me; the waiting. Keep doing this until you have everything covered evenly.
• While I was waiting for one layer to dry, I made the bow out of fabric from some ACU pants that my husband said were too faded to wear. I more or less followed this tutorial, except that I didn’t tuck the ends of knot piece under; I just left them out. I also used a twist tie to pinch the center together instead of embroidery thread, and ignored all of the steps that involved a hair clip.
• I needed a way to hang the tray, so I cut some ribbon and hot glued it to the back of the tray so that it made a big loop. Then used the ends of the bow twist tie to secure the bow to a thinner piece of ribbon, and tied it around the hanging ribbon. (I wasn’t sure if she would want an ACU bow hanging in her house, so I made it removable.)

That’s it! I just wrote my little thank you and wrapped it up. She loved it.