Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Plate Wall Tutorial

Here is a tutorial on how to complete your very own plate wall.  It's probably not really necessary and pretty self explanatory but I'm gonna show you anyways.  Plus I made one crucial mistake when doing mine and lost a really cute plate so hopefully this will prevent someone from doing the same thing I did ;)

Step 1:  Gather a collection of interesting plates. 

Step 2:  Arrange the plates on the floor to come up with a display you like.  I fiddled with mine and moved it around quite a bit before I settled on an arrangement.


Step 3: Trace your plates on paper.
I just used random coloured paper that I had lying around.  No rhyme or reason to the colours I chose to trace each plate with.  I also labelled the templates with a descriptor of the plate.

Step 4:  Stick your plate templates on the wall in the same design you made on the floor.


Step 5: Attach plate hangers to your plates.  I'll warn you though...the stupid plate hangers actually cost more than most of my plates!


DO NOT USE STICKY ADHESIVE THINGYS, despite their claims that they can hold up to 15lbs(this is how I lost my precious horsey plate).

These things are no good!

Step 6:  Remove one paper plate and nail in picture hanging hook.  Hang plate!

Step 7:  Repeat step 6 until all of your plates are hung.

Step 8:  Pat yourself on the back for being so handy and step back and enjoy your colorful, affordable, thrifted wall art:)

P.S-For the less anal people out there you could probably achieve the very same thing without bothering to make templates and just randomly hang up the plates...but I just couldn't handle the idea of that!

2 comments:

Tanya said...

I love the bird plate! And I create templates for all of the art I hang. There is nothing worse than getting a picture up and realizing that it is too low or high! I have plaster so you only get one crack! I wasn't trying to make a pun...

Power to the anal folks!

And your plate wall looks great! If I ever make it up you may have to search me before I leave...I am sure I can hide that bird plate somewhere!

PS - I love reading your blog :)

janniep said...

Thanks Tanya! The bird plate came from Pier 1. It's my only non-vintage one. I got it about two years ago but I did see them there for quite some time after I bought mine. They also had them in yellow, red and green:)