Tiered Tray Decorating – what is this latest trend? As you may already know, I love anything craft related and whilst this is not directly a crafty project, it is still right up my alley.

So, what is it? Literally, it is a tiered tray that you decorate with seasonal items, or items that reflect what is going on in your life at that point in time. You can decorate for Mother’s Day, Easter, Winter, Christmas, Birthdays…well, you get the idea.

In Australia, tiered trays are quite difficult to come by if you want to purchase one for a reasonable price. Most of the trays I found online were over $100 and were shipping from America which meant that the shipping costs were quite high. Eventually, I found a tray on sale at my local Myer store which I snapped up very quickly! I am so happy with my tray that I ended up purchasing another one for my Mum for Mother’s Day. If you google “Tiered Tray Myer” it should come up.

At the moment, I am decorating for Mother’s Day. I have also decided to have a Family theme to the decorations so that I can keep them there after Mother’s Day. I am not all that great with changing decorations often, so this suits me to a T.

1. Wooden Beads

Wooden beads are a must for these trays. You can easily make your own with some wooden beads and twine, or you can find some at KMart. When I bought mine they were $8 each. I found that they are really quite long, so you can cut them in half and knot off the ends and have 2 for the price of 1! They come in white only, so I think I will give mine some colour.

2. Wooden Chairs

These are just the cutest and I found them online at Riot Art and Craft. You can find them here. I think I will use these when Summer comes around. At the moment, we are in Autumn, so it will be a while before I get to use them!

3. Small Milk Bottles

You can find the cutest things online! The ones I found are from a place called Koch and Co. They are located in Sydney and you can go straight to their warehouse and browse. I found this awesome video on You Tube that shows you how to make fake bakes. I thought I might make some fake cream to out on top of the milk bottle to make it look like a milkshake. I will post a picture if I ever do it!

4. Canvas and Easel

I found these on the weekend at my local Spotlight store. My daughter created a sunset on it with crayons and I just love it. It fits in so well with my family theme. The canvas and easel set can be found here. 

5. Mini Chalkboard

These mini chalkboards fit right into my tiered tray. They are small and cute and I have decided to use my Silhouette Cameo to cut out the word Family and put it on there.  I got these from Koch and Co, however I think they were on clearance so they may be sold by now.

6. Home Sign

So this one takes a little more work. My husband has off cuts of wood everywhere that he uses for work, so I asked him to make me some of those wooden books you see everywhere. I gave him the dimensions and he cut out the wood however, they feel a little large for me so I cut two corners off one of them and painted it to represent our home. If you don’t have any wood lying around you can probably find a wooden cutout on the net. Etsy also has many sellers who are more than happy to help you out!

7. Wooden Books

So learning from the first lot of books I had hubby cut for me, I asked him to cut them out of a thinner piece of wood and also make them smaller in size. I painted them and then sandpapered off the edges so that the wood can show through on the corners. After that, I used my Silhouette Cameo to cut out the words Home Sweet Home and placed one word on each book. Finally, I used some twine to tie around the books just to set them off.

8. Family Monogram

I made this for my Mum as part of her Mother’s Day present. I found the P at Kaisercraft and once again got my husband to make the circle out of old pieces of wood. I painted the background in white chalk paint and the P in sage green and added some flourishes in vinyl that I cut out on my Silhouette.

How you place them and what you use is of course personal preference, but you could do something like mine to get started. After that, there is no limit to what you can do to decorate your Tiered Tray. It will be a decorating staple for many birthdays and Christmases to come.