DIY Cupcake Stand for under $4

Last weekend was my son's first birthday, and although I wanted to go all-out for him, I also had a limited budget with Christmas coming up soon. Because of this I knew I needed to get creative when it came to the decorations and serving dishes. I went to my local thrift store looking for inspiration and came across this strange looking thing-a-ma-doodle:

Anyone know what it is? I think it may have been used to hold salt/pepper and oil bottles? Maybe? Who knows. In any case, I thought it would work great for the base of a cupcake stand. Y'know, aside from the fact that it was insanely lopsided. But hubby made quick work of that and filed down one of the feet to make it level.

Next I took three stove burner covers I bought at the dollar store and spray painted both sides of the rims dark grey.

Then I cut some scrapbook paper to fit inside the burner covers. I didn't glue them down at all so that I can use the stand again for other parties and color-coordinate the paper for any event.

I glued the burner covers to the thing-a-ma-doodle (yep, I'm just going to keep calling it that) with some trusty E-6000 glue and used some canned food to keep everything in place while the glue dried.

Ta-da! I think it turned out so great and these little fishy cupcakes looked so cute on it.

I love cute cupcake and cake stands, don't you? I think somehow food tastes better when you serve it in a pretty way.