chiced / 4

Earlier this month, I posted this color crush. Remember, I mentioned a DIY with that color scheme? Well, here it is [finally].

For some reason, our coffee table had me stumped. Philip built it, I love it, we use it constantly, but I didn't know how to style it. Luckily, just as I started to give up, Jessica posted about that very thing on her blog. Perfect! I now had a general idea of how to go about decorating our coffee table. I would have loved to just go out and buy a tray, but my list of things to buy for our new place isn't shrinking. I figured, this was a good time for a little DIY.

It was pretty simple. I bought everything at Michael's (except for the painter's tape, which I already had). Michael's sells two sizes of trays (I went with the larger one). All the paint that I bought was from Martha Stewart's line. 

1. Paint your tray the base color

2. Once it's dry, tape off your design and paint away!

That's it. Easy right? If you want perfect lines, make sure to measure and press firmly on the edges of the tape. I like that ours isn't perfect.  ..PS: Here's another design idea for such a project.

Now that I had the tray done, I needed to actually style the coffee table. Ours is pretty simple. Below, I say "how it's styled for now" because knowing myself very well, I will most likely tire of this arrangement. I'm pretty ridiculous in that way and have to learn to let things go. Anyway, for now, we have magazines, the tray, fresh flowers, coasters, and a candle. All of these items are things we constantly use/ enjoy having around. The coasters and magazines are easy to use and put back neatly in their stack so it doesn't get too messy. Eventually, I would love to have a little stack of interior design books with something like this perched on top. All of this is usually pushed to one side of the coffee table. Until our dining table is done, this is where we eat. 

How do you have your coffee table styled? Is it something that gets used a lot in your house or just something to prop your feet on?