DIY: How to Make a Booklover’s Breakfast Tray

Having breakfast in bed? Making breakfast in bed for the book lover in your life? A beautiful breakfast tray is the perfect way to serve it up! Make one yourself with pages from an old book, a favorite book, or a book that has seen better days. Here’s how:

First, gather your materials.

• Plain wooden tray
• Glitter paint
• Liquid acrylic sealant (like Mod Podge)
• Paintbrush
• Spray sealant (like Shellak)
• Old book

Tear pages from your book.

Tear pages as cleanly and carefully as possible. If the book pages are difficult to tear out, use a ruler as a straight edge to aid in ripping them out. You can use the title and contents pages, a favorite portion of the story, or simply random pages.

Paint your tray with glitter paint and sealant.

Mix together your paint and acrylic sealant and paint all unfinished surfaces of the tray. You can add a few drops of solid color paint to the mixture as a tint – more will make the finish opaque. Let all the paint on the tray dry before moving on to the next step.

Arrange your pages and coat with paint/sealant.

Get creative with how you will arrange your pages by laying them out on your freshly painted tray. For this example, we put pages in each of the four corners. Once you’ve decided how you’d like to arrange your pages, coat them front and back with the same paint and sealant mixture. Place your pages on the tray, and use a brush or your fingertips to smooth each piece out flat.

Let dry, then seal with spray.

A breakfast tray is really only as useful as your ability to clean it, and for that you’ll need it to be waterproof. Once the pages have dried completely, lay your tray out in a well ventilated area and thoroughly coat all sides and angles with your spray sealant. You may want to do this on top of newspapers or another protective covering!

Serve up breakfast and enjoy!

Once your tray is completely dry, wipe it down with a damp cloth and then serve up your favorite breakfast for yourself or a very lucky someone you love. You can use this method to cover tables, lampshades, trunks, and almost any other flat surface with pages from stories you love! Get creative and have fun!