Plate Wall

Yesterday, I showed you my inspiration picture, talked about the plates I started with, ones I purchased and the one I personalize.

For my wall, I gathered my plates and arranged them on my dining room table.

Then, I traced each plate onto a piece of paper, cut it out and hung each one up on my wall.

After more rearranging, I hung each plate.  One by one.

Before:

Um, yeah.... nice vacuum!

And After:

I love it!  I love looking at the plates and seeing them for their meaning and not just for decoration.  I want to add a couple more ~ a little one next to the dark green one and a couple more towards the bottom, but they have to be the "perfect" plates ~ not just some to fill it in :)

Like I said, I got my idea from Pinterest and found lots of kitchen inspiration ~ for our new kitchen ~ on Pinterest as well.  So I'm wondering, what have you found on Pinterest that has inspired you (link it up in the comments)?

Creating a Plate with Meaning

I saw this wall on Pinterest and instantly fell in love with the idea!

(photo credit: Larissa Holland via mmmcrafts.blogspot.com)

I love the variety of sizes and colors of plates and how they all fit together.  I love the way they seem to creep up the wall, or perhaps they are falling down ~ depending on your perspective. I liked it so much, I decided I wanted to replicate it in my own home.

My wall wasn't created overnight.  My collection started with a couple of plates I got from my Grandpa, an antique collector.  One use to hang in his house, one still has his handwriting and price tag on the back of it and one is from a set of old dishes he had.  The other ones I purchased from random places ~ Crate and Barrel, a local antique store and Home Goods.

But since my plate wall was going up in my dining room, I also wanted a plate with our dinner blessing on it.  And I knew I would be creating it myself.  :)

I purchased a plain white dinner plate at TJ Max (on clearance for $1.50).  Measured out and drew lines (with pencil) directly onto my plate.

Took my fine tip black sharpie marker and wrote our prayer on it over and over and over.  I let it dry, began to wash off the pencil lines and proceeded to watch ALL of my words go down the drain with my lines. :(  Note to self ~ Regular Sharpie Markers DO NOT work on  glazed plates!

Since it was 11:30 at night.  I took a deep breath, gently place my plate on the counter and went to bed.

THE NEXT DAY.....

I went to the craft store and purchased the exact marker I had held in my hand the previous day when I was there, but talked myself out of buying.

Went home.  Redrew lines, rewrote my words and worried just a little when I turned the water on to get rid of my pencil lines.  I began to gently wipe them off and was relieved when they came off easily, but my ink did not!

My new plate:

Perfect for my plate wall!

Which, I will show you all tomorrow :)