Faux Marble Tray - An Easy DIY

by Lynn @ Nourish and Nestle

4 Materials

Can you believe that this great ‘marble tray’ is made from one of those very inexpensive acrylic frames? I’ve always loved the look of marble. As such, it’s no surprise to me that this material is quite popular in the design world right now. Read on and see how to DIY this Faux Marble Tray.
While Kate was packing up her stuff to head back to college this fall, she did a little cleaning up and discarding of items she no longer needed or wanted. Her bag of discards included an old 5 X 7 Acrylic Box Frame.

faux marble tray an easy diy, crafts, how to, painting

I have to tell you that I had such a fun time doing this little marble tray and now am looking for more opportunities to marbleize stuff. It was very simple and forgiving. If a mistake is made, then you could just paint over it and start again.

What you Need to Make a Faux Marble Tray:

An item to marbleize

White paint to cover your item. I used Rustoleum 2X Spray Paint White

Acrylic paint in white and black. I used Acrylic Paint 2 oz., Snow White by Americana and

Acrylic Paint 2 oz., Lamp Black by Americana.

Acrylic paint in gold for trim. I used DecoArt Dazzling Metallics Paint, 2 oz., Glorious Gold

Feather

Sponge, I did cut a little triangle out of to get in the tight spaces…It looked like a little pac-man.

Spray bottle with water

Paper towel

Frogtape Delicate Masking Tape(10-Pack), Yellow, which worked perfectly! I was very hesitant to put tape on my recently painted/marbleized surface so I did a test run by spray painting a piece of plastic and then putting this tape on it. I was so very happy when I was able to remove the tape without pulling of any of the recently applied paint.

How to ‘Marbleize’ a Faux Marble Tray:

Paint your entire piece with white paint. Because it was plastic, I used a paint with a primer in it.

Mix 2-3 shades of gray, from light to dark using your white and black paints (love my Pottery Barn catalog palate?)

Using your feather, draw some randoms lines in the different gray colors. Because my piece was so small, I opted to have my lines go in one general direction for the most part.

After it sets for about a minute, but before it is fully dry, lightly spritz the area with your water bottle.

Then take your sponge and gently dab the veins…don’t blur all of them…just here and there.

f you think you have too much gray and if it’s still wet then ‘pull’ it off with a sheet of damp paper towel. If it’s dry, then sponge on a little white paint where it’s needed. You can see towards the end of the video below where I ‘whitened’ up a few spots and it really improved the marble look.

Towards the end, hit up a few spot with your feather to give a little more definition where needed

I let it dry for a good day and then taped off the bottom inch of my Faux Marble Tray with the Frog Tape Delicate Masking Tape. Then I painted the top with DecoArt Metallic Paint in Glorious Gold. It took a couple of coats to thoroughly cover the marble underneath.

So, here’s the video I produced to show you the process. Originally it was a bit on the long side, so I shortened it by speeding it up. However, I think you can still get an idea of how I did the marbleizing from the video.