Thursday Tutorial: Hot Pink Home Decor DIY

I've been in the process of making my apartment a home for a little bit now. Slowly but surely it's all coming together! Oh course my appetite is constantly bigger than my wallet, so I've been finding cheap ways to creatively decorate my apartment. This hot pink and gold serving tray set way my first attempt at doing just that and I was really happy with how it turned out so I'm sharing this little tutorial for it with you guys!

I wanted a serving tray for my apartment that was bright and fun for when I had friends over, but I also wanted some simple vases to brighten up the place with some fake flowers. Yea that's right, fake flowers. I'm not good at keeping plant alive so I've kind of stopped trying for the moment. If anyone has some green thumb advice for house plants, I'll gladly take it. Anyway, I had picked up a metal tray from the thrift store that was pretty cool, but a little beat up and not as fun as I wanted it to be. As I dug through my stash of spray paint, inspiration hit!

This set will cost you close to nothing to make, especially if you already have spray paint at home. If you don't, it'll still probably cost you somewhere under $10. Super cheap right? Just be sure to save those ice tea bottles and pasta sauce jars.

Materials:

• Old metal tray
• Two or three glass jars, empty with labels cleaned off
• White spray paint
• Hot pink spray paint
• Gold spray paint
• Painter's tape

Instructions:

1. First off, cover your work surface entirely so you don't little hints of hot pink on your tables (like I did).
2. Prime your surface with white paint. I skipped this step and it was a mistake. 
3. Once the primer has completely dried, cover the entire tray and bottles or jars with the color that you want peaking out from underneath the main color. In my case it was the hot pink. 
4. Let the first coat dry. You might want to do another coat of the under color, especially if it didn't come out as bright as you wanted. 
5. Let the first coats dry overnight then you can start taping down your design with painters tape. It is very important that you make sure the first color has completely dried before you tape down your design otherwise the paint underneath will come off when you pull off the tape!*Keep in mind that the parts you cover in tape are the parts that will stay hot pink after all the painting is done. 
6. Once you're picked out your design, spray paint the whole thing in your top color, gold in this case. You might have to do two coats of this as well. Again, make sure you let the paint dry fully in between coats. 
7. Let your masterpiece dry overnight and then carefully peel off the painters tape. A razor blade or Exacto knife comes in handy here. 
8. And you're done! Pop in some pretty flowers and enjoy your brand new DIY home decor!

I was going to make the whole set hot pink and gold, but as I was letting the two pasta jars dry they looked really cool with the set in the sunlight so I changed the plans. The joys of DIY on the fly!

How do you decorate your home on a budget?

P.s. there's still time to enter my blog anniversary giveaway!