I was planning to post this project five days ago…. but it got the better of me. When I saw this wooden tray in a thrift store, and thought.. “I have an idea for this” I never imagined this is the article I’d be writing. What I thought would be a simple one day DIY turned into an epic battle. Five days and eight major mistakes later… I have lived to tell about it. And now you get to benefit from the lessons I have learned.
As you know, I’m a HUGE fan of picking up junk or found items, and turning them into treasures. I always preach to not only keep your eyes open but also your creative mind when out & about shopping. When I find a piece… I immediately begin to brainstorm on all of the possibilities. I consider myself a creative person, and often when I come up with those possibilities, its not something I have a tutorial for.. but just something I have imagined can be done. While success in these cases can be so rewarding…. the frustrations that can often come with a project not exactly going the way you imagined it can be high.
That is exactly what happened with this project…. so while I am happy to say that it is finally complete… I have decided to share with you all of the frustrations that I encountered in hopes that anyone out there facing a similar problem can learn from my mistakes. Luckily, had I known then the things I know now… this project would actually be quite easy. So for those of you interested in this project.. don’t fear. I have suffered for you, so that you may succeed! 🙂
I saw this wooden serving tray in a thrift store. Wooden pieces are my favorite, because they tend to be easy to work with.. slap a coat of paint on them, and you’ve fought half the battle! Not in this case…. painting this piece was only the beginning.. My idea was to turn this serving tray into a faux Ouija Board. I considered making a stencil for the design, and painting the Ouija Board onto the tray, but up until now, my version of stencils consisted of printing cardstock, and individually cutting out each shape. Holy shit – take a look at the Ouija Board…. no way was I going to cut each of those letters out with a scissor! It occurred to me that I purchased a Cricut Explorer machine 2 1/2 years ago…. and I was determined to use it for this Ouija Board project!! (Side note – now that I have given myself a crash course on the Cricut machine, I realize I should be able to cut my own stencil….. but before I slit my wrists on another Cricut project, I may postpone that lesson for a bit …. stay tuned!)
Back when I bought this machine, there was a project I had seen on Pinterest and wanted to try it. After a lackluster effort to figure it out, I gave up… put the machine in my attic and never touched it again. It has always annoyed me that I possessed a tool, that I knew had potential, yet had not learned to use it. I swear… The damn thing calls to me from the darkness of my attic! Over the course of the last few years, I have occasionally looked up Cricut Project ideas. But here’s the problem…. it appears to be a tool for bored housewives and sorority girls…. seriously – you should see the you tube videos that people post with Cricut tutorials! And I have watched A LOT of them in the past week!! I have just not been able to relate to the ideas that these people have… and probably why I have remained so uninspired. Sorry – I just do not want to put vinyl butterflies on the wall of my living room… or a Pi Kappa Crappa logo on a Tervis tumbler!!
That silly bird feeder serving tray gave me hope… and I finally found a reason to get out that machine and get to work. My plan was to create the Ouija Board pattern out of white vinyl letters.
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Here’s what you need for this project:
- Wooden Tray
- Sander / Primer – optional
- Black Paint
- Polycrylic
- Cricut Machine
(I used the original Cricut Explore, but there are new & improved versions out since I purchased mine years ago)
- Cricut Tools
and Cutting Mat
- White Craft Vinyl
- Transfer Tape
(I used the original Cricut Explore, but there are new & improved versions out since I purchased mine years ago)
and 
Here’s the process… along with all of my painful mistakes:
1. Find a wooden serving tray. These are not so hard to come by at thrift stores… just keep your eyes open, as I always say!
2. Clean, Sand, or Prime the tray as needed. It is important that your paint fully adhere to the surface. Mistake #1 – I did not completely sand the birdfeeder image off of the board, nor did I use a Primer…. a mistake I will discuss in more detail in a later step.
3. Black Paint – I used a flat black paint…. but because of the Polycrylic, the final project comes out glossy… so a gloss black paint would work too.. it doesn’t really matter which you choose. Quite honestly, after painting the tray, I thought to myself… I really like this solid black serving tray! I will now be keeping my eyes peeled for another wooden tray, so I can have a solid black version. 🙂
4. Polycrylic – this is a step I learned about along the way. I was googling ways to “seal” the project once the vinyl letters had been applied… and instead, came across tutorials on sealing the paint before applying the letters. Apparently, tons of people have trouble adhering the vinyl letters to painted wood, and it was suggested that by adding a polycrylic finish, it provides something for the letters to adhere to. I didn’t want to take any chances, so I added a layer of polycrylic to the tray. A note about polycrylic… this was my first time using this product, and I wasn’t sure how it would dry…. so here’s Mistake #2 – I covered the flat surface of the tray (where the vinyl would be) with the polycrylic, but during the process, some of the poly brushed up on the sides. I lightly brushed the areas on the sides to even it out a bit, and assumed it would dry clear. Unfortunately, when it dried… it was extremely glossy, and the areas that were not covered in the poly, were very evident. I had to go back and repaint the poly, covering the entire surface of the serving tray.
5. Design your image in Cricut Design Space. I am not going to go into a full blown Cricut How To…. if you already own a Cricut Machine.. chances are you know most of the steps… and if you’re planning to buy one, there are TONS of tutorials out there to help you through the basics. Those crafty housewives just LOVE making Cricut YouTube videos!! I will however highlight some of the problems I ran into, and struggled to find answers for, as a first time Cricut user.
- Cricut Design Space has an entire library of images and projects that you can choose from…. but unfortunately Ouija board is not one of those images… Not that I’m surprised… I don’t think sorority girls like to put Ouija Boards stickers on their Ipad Cases. Before passing judgement on the quality of content, I tried looking up their library of skulls… I mean – don’t crafty ladies even use a skull or two on their Halloween projects? … but this was a library of the cutest, sweetest little skulls you’ve ever seen!! UGH – doesn’t anyone cool use Cricut?!?!?! Thus.. I had to create my design from scratch…
- I am no stranger to CAD design. In fact, I’ve been using Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop for CAD work for almost two decades. Unfortunately, Cricut Design Space has extremely elementary tools compared to the Adobe programs, so if you are an Adobe user… prepare to be frustrated! When possible, I used Photoshop or Illustrator to create my images (the sun, moon, and corner scroll), and simply uploaded them into Cricut Design Space. For the letters and numbers, however, I built those in Design Space….. Let the frustration begin….
- Mistake #3 – I chose Algerian font for my letters and numbers. It looked good at the time on my screen… and as a first time Cricut user… I did not yet know the problems I would face with this font when it came time to separate the vinyl from the cut letters… I’ll explain more as I get to that step. To save you the pain & trouble…. use the Los Banditos font. This was recommended as similar to the classic Ouija Board font… and is what I ultimately ended up with.
- When searching for a tutorial on creating a curved text path (for the alphabet)… all of the tutorials instructed me to use a circle shape, ungroup all of the letters, and individually move and rotate each letter around the circle border. OH MY GOD – are you serious?? That is the worst tutorial I’ve ever seen!! But alas, I could not find any other solutions… so I painstakingly worked on each letter and number one at a time… When I have more time to play, I am determined to find a better way to do this!! A tip: use the Edit Panel to adjust the length, width, and spacing of the letters before you ungroup… once ungrouped, the changes will need to be made to each individual letter. I chose the size of the alphabet first, then ungrouped, and moved each letter in place. Once I had the 2 arched rows correct, I added the numbers, and spaced as needed.
- Then I added the words and shapes, and arranged my image based on the size of my serving tray, which was roughly 11 x 17″. It seemed to have taken forever… but I finally had the image as I wanted it!!
6. Prepare your image for cutting. I thought if I put everything exactly on the artboard where I wanted it… that is how it would print. Mistake #4! This step kicked my ass! For those of you that are Cricut Pros… I have no doubt that you’ll think I’m a dumbass for all of the mistakes I made here.. but please keep in mind.. this was my first time using Design Space.. and there was surprisingly little help online for the particular questions I had. It took some trial & error to figure it out… so since I am no “pro”.. I can only offer the solutions I found. If anyone knows of a better approach.. by all means, please leave me a comment – I’d love to learn to be more efficient!!
- Cricut’s printable width is 12″, and the basic cutting mat is 12 x 12. Since my image was 11 x 17.. I had some changes to make. I had to dismember my layout, and was able to fit all but the corner shapes into a 12″ width.. and I figured I’d just place my corner images separately.
- Cricut automatically rearranges each component to maximize space once you send it to cut… So, when I tried to preview my image, all of the letters and numbers were displayed in a row starting at the top left corner of the page, no longer in an arched shape… my layout was gone! GASP!
- Upon a bit of research, I discovered the “attach” function on my layers panel. I attached the letters, numbers, and words to create one image (Mistake #5)…. but when I tried to preview, I was told that the image was too big for the printable space. This made absolutely no sense to me since I knew I had placed the image within a 12″ artboard….
- Alas…. another tool on the Layers Panel – the Layer Attributes. Within these attributes, you can set your image to cut, print, score, or write. For some reason, all of my letters were set to Print (not sure why… perhaps because of the moronic font I chose). Apparently the Cricut default printable width is only 8″. I changed EACH letter & number to Cut…. pushed the preview button expecting success- NOPE!! Got the same error message!!! Beyond frustrating to continue to find what appear to be solutions only to meet yet another roadblock!
- At this point, I was so frustrated. I was so close yet so far! I had been working on this design for days!! (To be fair… I spend most of my days chasing a 1 year old… so my five days may be a normal person’s two!) I just started testing more buttons… and eventually came across the Weld button on the Layers Panel. Success! Finally… success!! Once the images were welded together.. I was able to preview my design on a 12 x 12 board… and the layout remained intact. I saved the project…. Mistake #6. You see… Welding cannot be undone. So, if there is any chance that you may want to go back & make a few changes (which I did!!)… Save your work before Welding, and Save separately once welded.
7. Send your image to cut. This is an easy one…. Design Space will walk you thru each step as soon as you click Go.
8. Separate the cut image from the vinyl. This step is tedious, but would not have been so bad had it not been for the font I chose (remember mistake #3?). The fine line around each letter was almost impossible to work around. It wasn’t long before I had pulled out all of my hair, and I decided to rework my design with another font and re-cut….. but oh – that’s right… Mistake #6… I couldn’t undo the Weld, so I had to redo every letter and every number. I used my original design as a template, so it didn’t take as long as the first time… but still – what a pain in the ass!! Once the new design was cut, I had to attach it to the original design…. You see, I decided to take a shortcut when I had to redo all of the characters in the new font… and just do the letters and numbers. Since the Yes, No, and Goodbye were already cut, I figured I’d just scotch tape them together. Mistake #7. Do not take shortcuts. Do not use tape!!! I’ll explain in the next step….
9. Use Transfer Tape to adhere the image to the tray. There are easy to follow instructions that come with the transfer tape for attaching the vinyl to it. BUT….. Here’s the thing about the transfer tape and the vinyl letters… it works extremely well!! So be VERY careful when you decide to place it on your board.
- I misjudged the center of my design (Mistake #8) and when I attempted to adjust the transfer tape, it was too late… The letters had already adhered to the surface… so sadly, my design is not centered on my tray.
- Since I had opted to cut each corner individually.. I also placed one of the corner scrolls uneven.. and was not able to correct it.
- The other issue is that the transfer tape may pull up your paint if it is not fully adhered to the tray (remember Mistake #1?). As I pulled the transfer tape away.. it left the vinyl letters behind, but also took some of the paint with it.
- It also left the scotch tape behind, (that’s right – it picked up the tape I had used to attach the two images together) and when I removed that.. it too took some of the paint away.
I touched up the paint as best I could, but can see where the touch ups occurred. All of these mistakes make me crazy! After battling this project for 5 straight days…. I almost threw in the towel and refused to write this post. I am a perfectionist, and unless something comes out perfect, I often think it’s trash. For anyone out there who has ever tried a DIY project… you all know that there are as many failures as there are successes. In this case.. I decided to allow you all a sneak peak at what I consider a semi-failed project, so you can learn from my mistakes. Like I said earlier.. if I had known then what I know now… this project could have been an easy success! I hope it will be for any of you that attempt it. If you do try it, please leave a comment or photo to let me know how it turned out.
For now, I need to figure out a way to correct the touch-ups. I would love to find a product I could use to seal the entire surface. From what I read… most products cause the vinyl to curl up… but I’m heading to the home improvement store tonight to buy some different sealants to test. I’ll let you know if I find a solution! As for the off center design… I might just be a harsh critic. I showed this off and no one else noticed. So, once I get the seal right… I’m looking forward to using this tray for a little dark entertaining. Do they make planchette shaped dishes?? How cute would that be?!?!
Oh – and one last thing…. Now that I’ve fought this epic Cricut Battle… I am determined to find more cool ways to use the machine. Stay tuned for more Dark Cricut Projects…. 🙂 And stay tuned for more DIY Ouija Board ideas. Now that this project is done, I have a ton of ideas for making a new and improved version!!
Update: This serving tray came in handy at the Halloween Dinner Party I hosted…. perfect for the drink station! It worked perfectly as a home for a few black wine goblets, and the Pumpkin Wine Dispenser!
Another update: As I suspected when I finally finished this project, Cricut has become one of my favorite DIY tools…. I use it all of the time. To see how I’ve used more of the vinyl application, check out these DIY Skull Halloween Signs, these Skull Table Numbers for a Goth Wedding, and a Raven Mirror donning a quote from the famous poem. This Edgar Allan Poe Jenga was made using a Cricut Stencil, and these Halloween Inspired Escort Cards walk you through using a Cricut to cut cardstock!
Yep. Sounds like some of my Cricut projects… right down to the distinct lack of cool elements – I often use Photoshop and create my own. My very first design was a spell chair (if you haven’t yet, search for it on the blog) which is a spell in a spiral that covers the seat. Like you, I started with a really easy project!!! lol Once again, we have similar projects, although I made my Ouija Tray in the days before the Cricut, using water slide decals. I did, however, use the Cricut for the Ouija dining table. It was stunning, but I sealed it with entirely the wrong stuff, which left hideous brush marks. Like you, I’m a perfectionist, so the whole thing got ripped off. I have yet to redo it… too damn soul-destroying!! Ho hum x
So glad you mentioned your chair… I just checked it out… and LOVE it! Since my Ouija Board debacle, I’ve really been enjoying using my Cricut for projects!
Any way you would share your Ouija board design? I am making a Ouija board costume for Halloween and dread putting this all together in design space. Lets be honest it’s a pain in the ass and I am not that good with the Cricut. Also I have searched the corners of the web and you are the only one making Ouija board designs (Thank the higher powers) glad I’m not the only one with this idea
Hi Rachel! I’m happy to help…. however, Cricut does not allow for projects to be shared when they contain an uploaded image, therefore, it will not allow me to share my design space that contains the corner scrolls or the sun & moon. I was, however, able to separate the curved alphabet and numbers into it’s own design space…. So – I can share that with you. Separately, I have the scroll, sun, and moon saved as PNG files that I can send to you. They are quick and easy to upload into design space. To complete your project, you’ll simply just need to type YES, NO, and GOODBYE onto your project and you’ll have all of the elements. Let me know if that all makes sense and would work for you. If so, is hevenlyprincess13@yahoo.com the email address I should send it all to?
Thanks!
I just learned something new about cricut but yes that all makes sense & it will work. I’m excited thank you so very much. Also yes hevenlyprincess13@yahoo.com is a good email address for me. You rock!
I just saw this post and love your tray! Can you share your design? So excited to try it!
Hi Laura! Of course… would be happy to. Unfortunately, it’s not in one succinct design layout, so I’ll have to send it to you in pieces.. I can explain when I send it. Are you planning on using a cricut to do the project? And is meyer.a.laura@gmail.com a good email address to send it to? Thanks!