Cardboard Breakfast-in-Bed Tray

Mother's Day, Birthday or another special day has arrived and you want to provide that special someone with Breakfast in Bed!

BUT you don't have a good way to serve it.

IMPROVISE!

Make a Breakfast-in-Bed Serving Tray out of Cardboard!

Supplies

1 - Cardboard Box - Ideally one with dimensions that match your desired finished tray dimensions. You could take a sheet, cut notches in the corners and fold up the sides but it is much easier if you can find the right size box. I lucked out!

4 - Cardboard tubes. These are about 1-inch in diameter and about 12 inches long. These are not your flimsy paper towel or gift wrap tubes. They need a wall thickness around 1mm. (sorry for mixing units). I believe these can be found used with aluminum foil, plastic wrap dispensers or seal-a-meal bags. Alternately you could use 1-inch diameter PVC pipe.

2 - Cardboard sheet as large as the tray.

Decorative Paper to cover exposed ends of the tubes (optional)

Marking device - aka pen or pencil

Utility Knife

Hot Glue Gun and Sticks

Step 1: Cut Off Bottom of Box

Cut the "tray" out of the bottom (or side depending on the shape) of the box. You want to make your cut about 2 inches up from the surface you are using for your tray, usually the bottom.

This two inch distance is the wall height of the tray. You can adjust it for higher or lower tray walls.

Step 2: Cut Holes for Legs

Mark the locations of the legs by tracing around a cardboard tube. When locating the tube you need to leave some space between the tube and the edge of the cardboard for the thicknesses of the tray wall.

You can see in the last photo I had to adjust my placement to get enough space to the wall.

You could mark and cut the hole from inside of the tray but the upturned walls make it more difficult.

Mark and cut the leg holes in each of the four corners.

Step 3: Add Legs

Push each of the cardboard tube legs through the holes you have just cut.

Hot glue them into place. Especially gluing them to the upturned walls of the tray so that the legs have rigidity.

Step 4: Cover Open Tops of Tubes

If you like you can cut out circles of decorative paper to cover the openings of the leg tubes.

Step 5: Reinforce the Tray

A single sheet of cardboard is not what you want holding all the trappings of a nice breakfast. Think of milk and orange juice spilling all over the bed! So it is wise to strengthen the tray.

I did this by adding two sheets of flat cardboard over the surface of the tray. Ideally it should completely cover the tray, but the pieces I had were slightly smaller. I added them anyway, and there was only a small gap.

The extra cardboard sheets greatly improved the strength of the tray and there was no sagging under the weight of breakfast!