DIY Scrabble Serving Tray

Just thought I'd share another little project I finished recently...a scrabble themed serving tray!  This will be a Christmas gift to my Grandma, who is both an excellent hostess and Scrabble player, so I think it will fit her well.  Luckily she does not have a computer so I can share this with all of you before Christmas.  ;-)

I picked up this perfect serving tray for $4.99 at Saver's a few weeks ago.  I considered this one perfect for this project for a couple reasons...1) The tray itself is flat, 2) The plastic handles are easily remove-able with a couple screws. I have been scouring the thrift stores for weeks to find an old Scrabble game with no luck...until last weekend when I stopped by a garage sale and found one for $0.25 cents.  Score!!

 

After giving the tray a good cleaning, I un-screwed and removed both of the plastic handles, with plans to replace them with something more fitting later...

I spread some glue around and stuck down all of the letters.  This tray held one entire game's worth of Scrabble tiles.

Here they sat to dry.

 Next, I thought it would be fun to use the old wood letter trays as new handles.  So, I measured and marked the tray off of the existing plastic handles, and cut them apart with my coping saw.

 Be sure to pre-drill the holes so you don't split the wood when you attach these.

 Once the holes were drilled, I screwed them into place...I think it added a cool touch! 

If you have enough letter tiles left, it may be fun to glue a few into the tray on the handle too.  Maybe even spell something fun.

 The next day, after the glue was really dry, I mixed up a batch of EnviroTex Lite resin to pour over the whole thing.  It's the same stuff I used on the top of my train table.

 I used a wooden paint stir stick to mix the resin and then to help spread it across the tray, making sure all of the tiles were covered.

 As it dries, check on it every few minutes, and exhale over any bubbles that come to the surface...the carbon dioxide makes them pop so you have a crystal clear coating!

Aaaaand, we're done!  Pretty fun project!  If you didn't want to use clear resin, you could also grout it like a mosaic which would also look very cool.  I'd recommend sealing the tiles in a clear varnish before applying any grout, to ensure that they wipe clean and the wood grain doesn't hold onto any haze from the grout.

So there you have it...one Christmas present down, many more to go!