Day two of my 12 Crafting Days of Christmas series is building Lego trays. Now, when I first saw this project, I wanted to make just two of these: one for each of my boys. It’s turned into an adventure, folks. My husband decided that he wanted to earn some extra Christmas cash, so he set out to make a bunch of these. We bought Lego base plates on Black Friday, went to Home Depot and loaded up on wood, and set out to make a bunch of these to sell at a craft fair before the holiday comes. Isn’t that the way it goes? My tiny project has now taken up most of two weeks. I’m excited to show you how it went for us.
The original post I pinned is here, but she links back to another site; if you want to look at that one, it is here. We made ours a little differently, so I will try to point out the main differences in our trays compared to the others. When we got the Lego base plates in the mail, we realized that they were kind of small. I thought they were too small to sell, honestly. I tried to figure out how to price them and make any money off of them at all. Sanding, painting, gluing, drilling, sanding again; these things all take a lot of time. What a small tray for such a large amount of work. Then it hit me: It needed a place to hold Legos that were not being used yet. A sorting compartment would make it so much better.
We decided to build one 10x10 compartment to hold the Lego base plate and one 10x4 compartment to hold Legos. Side-by-side like this, it was the perfect size for small hands to carry. It wound up just about the same size as a lunch tray and weighs in at under 3 pounds. We bought plastic handles instead of metal, not only to save on weight, but to save on cost as well. They are still super sturdy but weren’t crazy expensive like some handles can be.
Painting supplies at the ready. Oh, and some beautiful little flowers out of my garden that got run over by a bicycle. They are living out their final days on my counter.
Are you dying for a picture already? Here are a few of the trays we finished.
I also chose to hand paint the names on without stenciling. It’s an option if you are confident enough with a paintbrush in hand. I wasn’t too worried about it, but stenciling may be more your thing. We also put our trays together with liquid nail and small finishing nails instead of using their method. I painted our trays in bright, Lego-esque colors and I really like the way they came out. Want a little more Lego goodness? Here are a few more:
Yes, my workspace is a fat mess. Welcome to creating. There's no beautifully photoshopped product photos in my blog. If you came for that, I'm sorry.
Here's a top shot too. I love green and yellow, or red and blue, or black and green. Really, I loved every tray I got to lay my hands on.
I’d say this project came out way better than I ever expected. Thank you, Pinterest! Legos are the thing this year, just like last year. It’s not just our kids, either. I couldn’t believe how quickly our trays sold. Praise God too, or we would’ve been up to our ears in Lego trays all for ourselves. I’m super excited over the whole project.
We made 16 of these little sweeties over the last two weeks. That’s a lot of happy kids this Christmas. It feels like Santa’s workshop over here with the tinkering, painting, and sewing going on non-stop. Oh, and don’t tell my kids they are getting a couple of these too, eh? It’ll be our little secret. They beg me every day for one and I keep telling them that I’m selling them all so I can buy them other things for Christmas. I can’t wait for them to unwrap them on Christmas morning.