Custom Serving Tray Inspiration

Monday, April 23, 2012

Custom Serving Tray Inspiration | Family Economics

plates My favorite dishes in the house are the melamine-type plates decorated with our children’s artwork designed in elementary school and Girl Scout/Boy Scout programs. We have had many of them for nearly ten years and they are still in great shape and vibrant as ever.

Most all of these were fund-raiser projects through a company called MakeIt that takes your child’s artwork and photographs and magically creates all kinds of dishes from bowls and cups to plates and platters. You can send in your artwork, collage, or photos, or simply upload images onto their website to customize your own pieces.

tray ideas I thought springtime would be the perfect time to make a few indoor/outdoor serving trays. The rectangle shape of a tray gives way for lots of great design ideas. Of course photos of your kids and pets are natural choices for decorating trays, but I wanted to inspire you to think outside the box a bit and consider all the possibilities for designing really unique items that make great serving pieces and extraordinary gifts.

Take a look around the “freebies” page of my blog and you’ll find lots of free images that you can download to your computer and then upload to the custom dish website to make your own. To spark some ideas, I’ve digitally created some images as examples of some fun trays to make: a vintage group photo, a script alphabet, a scanned quilt and an old postcard. Some other image ideas are:

•   A photo collection of items such as postage stamps, jewelry or coins
•   A favorite scrapbook layout
•   A photo of your house/landscape/property
•   A vintage paint-by-number
•   A photo of serving utensils or heirloom silverware
•   A snapshot collage of your ancestors
•   A photo of your children’s hands turned upwards as if they are serving the food on the platter
•   A photo of the spines of your favorite books on the shelf

What are some other fun images that could be turned into trays and other dishes?

5 Comments so far

On Monday, April 30, 2012, Cathe Holden wrote

Rosa Marie, I'm sorry you're having trouble- this might help with downloading the image: http://www.ehow.com/how_4939_download-picture-internet.html" target="_blank">http://www.ehow.com/how_4939_download-picture-internet.html

On Saturday, April 28, 2012, JDG wrote

Trays make me happy

On Wednesday, April 25, 2012, Rosa Marie from Southern Il. wrote

I tried to down load the old time school group picture but it would not let me. Love your site.

On Wednesday, April 25, 2012, Karen wrote

What a great gift idea! I might have to try this.

On Tuesday, April 24, 2012, Dana from The White Silk Purse wrote

This is a clever idea and provides food for thought. Great Mother's Day gifts, don't you think?

Thank You

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