Place your focal point items - wheels or chunks of cheese, sauce ramekins, dip bowls, etc - on the charcuterie tray.

Situate your meats roughly where you’d like them to go, then place your cheeses.

Arrange sections of your starches - crackers, cookies, bread.

Fill in your sections of the more “snacky” produce, leaving more “garnish” produce for a later step. In this example, that means placing the figs, orange bell pepper slices, and grapes now, and saving the fresh sage for the finishing touches.

Place sections of your “Munchies” items, filling in any larger empty spaces. This is the toasted pecans and dried apricots.

Arrange your meat and cheese slices more artfully, if desired.

Fill in any sparsely covered areas with more meat, cheese, produce, etc.

Add dips to the bowls, if applicable, then garnish as desired - I used sage leaves.

Serve and enjoy!