DIY A Stunning Love-Inspired Wood Tray Using A Dollar Tree Game

Every February, love is in the air. As you think about the best way to decorate your home for Valentine's Day, it's likely that visions of hearts are dancing before your eyes. While there's a lot of heart-shaped decor out there, ranging from throw pillows to Valentine's Day wreaths to personalized wooden love letters, an understated heart-shaped wooden tray is appealing both for the holiday dedicated to love and for year-round use. It's a simple enough project that you could make several as party or wedding favors, or it could become a piece of wedding decor that you could reuse. You could even use the tray to serve a small breakfast in bed in celebration of other holidays, like Mother's Day, birthdays, or more.

This heart-shaped wooden tray is inexpensive, too, using a few simple supplies from Dollar Tree, like the Valentine's Day DIY Solid Hearts and the Tumbling Tower Game. The hearts are about 11½ inches wide, and slightly taller than that, while the game comes with 72 small blocks of wood, which can also be used to create rustic coasters. Beyond that, you'll just need basic supplies like wood glue or hot glue and possibly a hand saw or other cutter if you need to make any fit adjustments.

YouTuber Maria Carranza of Crafting with Maria creates her tray using a heart-shaped template as the base — this is where the heart shapes from Dollar Tree come in. She then proceeds to glue the game piece blocks around the entire edge of the base, applying the adhesive both to the bottom of the blocks that connect to the heart-shaped base and to the sides that connect to other blocks. The blocks, which stand upright, create a frame that can contain items within the tray. Her last game piece didn't fit in the remaining hole when she'd almost completed this framing, so she measured the space and cut it to fit.

Crafting with Maria uses a brush to apply a wax stain to all areas of the tray, including the base and the blocks that create the rim, for an antique look. While you certainly can use products like Folk Art Acrylic Paint Antique Wax in dark wood colors to achieve the same sort of look, you could also choose to personalize your tray by choosing from the variety of paint and stain colors available. If you have the artistic talent, you could also add stencils or other art to personalize your decorative DIY tray.