My job is terrible. That will never change, but I do have the tiniest bit of control over my surroundings. I had a small epiphany a while ago that just because I don’t enjoy any aspect of being an administrative assistant at a swag factory doesn’t mean I can’t try to enjoy myself, at least a little bit, at work. It’s going to take a while to find a new job and I don’t want to wait until then to be happy.
I thought a natural place to start was the small, cluttered pile of office supplies on my desk. My paperclips and thumbtacks, etc. would look so much better in a cute little tray. Of course, I figured I’d make one myself to make it more personal and save money (more on that later). While I was at it, I decided to take the opportunity to finally have tea at my desk. I really wanted to get as much happiness out of each day as possible.
Since I’m not going to use these trays to carry anything, I just made them out of cardboard, scrapbook paper, and mod podge. Eventually, I also included jars I had saved because I like jars and a nice thrifted mug and saucer for the tea tray. I made sure to purchase all my extras and choose my jars before I started working on the trays so that everything would fit. I did end up making some substitutions in the end.
The office supplies were at my desk anyway, so I started with the tea tray. I rushed and it came out a bit sloppy. I took my time with the office supplies tray and it came out a little better, but still not perfect. And that’s fine. They don’t have to be perfect to be nice to look at.
From start to finish, both trays took me about four months, but doesn’t mean I spend four months working on it. I got the idea, bought the supplies, let everything sit around my house for a while, forgot which paper I meant to use on the outside and which paper I meant to use on the inside, never remembered, finally made the tea tray, that was a lot, waited a few more months, and finally had a free weekend to make the office tray. One has floral print on the outside, one has floral print on the inside, I have a lot of extra scrapbooking paper that I need to think of something to do with, it’s fine.
Here’s a breakdown of my process:
Supplies for the office tray (Tea tray was similar, I just bought a teacup and strainer)
| Supplies | Cost | Notes |
| Mod Podge* | $5.99 | |
| Craft Paper* | $2.84 | 4 sheets @$.71 ea |
| Sponge Brush* | $0.99 | |
| Cardboard | $3.79 | 1 box of cereal |
| Lotion Jars (for tacks and paper clips) | $19.98 | 2 jars @ $9.99/jar |
| Peanut Butter Jar (for pens and pencils) | $5.00 | |
| Total* (* is things I had to buy) | $9.82 | |
| Total Total | $38.59 | (Obviously I ate the cereal and used the lotion. Nothing was wasted) |
| Active time | 6 hours | (per tray) |
Steps:
- Plan, Plan, Plan: planning is everything when you’re working without instructions. For this project, I measured each item and decided how big that section of the tray needed to be. I cut out a square or rectangular piece of paper for each section and arranged them into an approximately rectangular shape. I adjusted the dimensions so it actually made a rectangle, then planned out the dimensions of every single piece of cardboard and paper I would need to cut. All this took two hours.
- Cut some stuff (but be careful): Please measure twice and cut once. Or better yet, measure twice, step away, make sure your dimensions were correct in the first place, measure again, then cut. And for the love of all that is good in the world, label things. If you’re cutting all your cardboard and paper out at once, there’s a good chance you won’t use some of it for a while and you don’t want to forget which piece is which, then spend hours re-measuring everything. This took about an hour.
- Start gluing!: This part gets a little messy. Make sure you lay down some wax paper before you start. If you want to mod podge the bottom as well as the inside, you will have to do this in stages. There doesn’t seem to be one way that’s inherently faster. If you start with the bottom, you’ll have to let that dry before you start the inside, and if you do the inside first, you’ll probably have to secure the dividers while they dry (I used clothespins) before you can glue the bottom. Such is life. Not including the drying time, this took about 3 hours.
- Bonus!: If you have extra scrapbook paper and want to make cute little jars to keep your stuff in, cut small labels out of plain paper, mod podge them to a circle of extra scrapbook paper, and mod podge that to the lid of the jar. Or cur out a rectangle of scrapbook paper about the circumference of the jar (a little extra for overlap), and label the side of the jar. Now it looks like it all came as a set!
-Erica
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