I’ve been staring at the wall above this dresser for months, thinking it needed a little oomph.
Somewhere along the line, I got the idea to fill it with plates. I started collecting plates from thrift stores and clearance racks. It took me a while to amass a small collection that felt right. I’ve got a lot of colorful plates in my stash, but every time I laid everything out and played around with combinations I was drawn to a simple palette.
Silver platters and dishes are plentiful in suburban thrift stores, but I rarely see them at the one closest to my house (in a more urban area). Lucky for me my job takes me a little further afield, where there are apparently lots of ladies with silver to spare. It’s just as easy for me to stop into that thrift store before heading home as it is to swing by the one in my neck of the woods.
Using only silver and white dishes took some of the guesswork out of this project. I love me some color, but I felt nervous mixing patterns from various eras and styles, plus making it not clash with the blue dresser directly below the plates or the mustard yellow coffee table just across the room. Silver and white it was.
I measured the area above the dresser and cut a piece of craft paper to roughly the same size.
The paper was super curly, hence the various items used to secure the corners. I didn’t really know where to start, so I just put all the plates on the paper and started playing around with arrangements. You can see the process step-by-step below. I brought in a few extra dishes, even a colorful floral saucer I’m quite fond of, but eventually ended up using only the original six I’d started with.
And finally, I had The One.
I used a Sharpie to trace first around the outside of each dish, then reached underneath to trace as best I could the area of the plate that actually touched the floor.
I stuck the whole thing up there with painter’s tape. I really wanted to keep the mannequin leg, so I thought I’d make it slightly off-center, but it just didn’t feel right.
Then I said, forget off-center, let’s go asymmetrical! I never could pull off those one-shouldered dresses so this is as edgy as I’m ever gonna get. I centered the paper above the dresser and moved the silver dish furthest to the right up and over a smidge so that it wouldn’t be blocked by the leg.
Side note, do you notice anything different in the photo below? I was using a stool to reach the wall above the dresser and Pistachio was just so fascinated by what I was doing. She jumped up on the stool to watch and just couldn’t resist the temptation to destroy my punched paper garland in a single swing of the paw. I was pretty much devastated, but comforted myself with a reminder that it was quite summery and probably would have come down soon as I transitioned to more fall/winter decor anyway.
The circles don’t photograph well, but in real life it was pretty easy to see the layout from across the room. I walked away and came back a few times, looking at it from various angles to be sure I liked what I saw.
When I was convinced that no additional tweaking was in order, I used a pair of scissors to score the center of each circle, then cut out the area that I’d drawn to indicate where the plate touched the wall, leaving a nice template for hanging.
I had some of the Command velcro picture hanging strips leftover from hanging a silver platter on my living room wall, but I didn’t feel like trekking all the way to a big box store to get more. I found these command hooks at Walgreen’s for $1.99 each and decided to poach the eight included strips. The thinner strips used for the hooks only worked with the silver dishes, since the backs of them pressed flat against the wall. The plates each had a little rim around the outside, meaning that I needed the thicker velcro strips to reach from the wall to the back of the plate. I’ll spare you the drama, but I learned that lesson the hard way. Command strips were wasted. I was bummed. So, lesson to those following along at home: be sure your strips are beefy enough to bridge the gap between wall and plate.
These strips were rated to hold one to two pounds each, so I felt pretty good about just popping one in each space. I know from experience that it’s important to follow the directions and A) press each strip for thirty seconds, B) wait an hour before hanging anything. I like to make these mistakes so you don’t have to. Nine times out of ten my corner-cutting style pays off, but occasionally I’m made to regret my decisions.
So, while I waited an hour for the adhesive to cure or whatever, I cut out the wider circles I’d drawn on the paper (to indicate the outer edges of each plate). This made it easier both to place my plates and to remove the paper afterwards.
Then, so exciting, I just referred to the last picture I’d taken of the plates laid out on the floor and began applying each dish, pressing firmly on each for a full minute before moving on. I was kind of not following the directions here so I tried to make up for it by pressing firmly for twice as long as I was required (they wanted me to let the adhesive cure on both surfaces before applying any weight, but that just wasn’t practical).
And, ta-da! It’s been a few hours now and nothing’s fallen down yet so I feel pretty good about it. I’ll let you know if I live to regret not using the velcro strips on all of them.
It’s everything I’d hoped and dreamed it would be. Seriously, I’m ob.sessed. It’s nice to have a subtle palette balancing out the bright blue dresser, but the asymmetrical arrangement and unexpected mannequin leg keep things interesting. I’m starting to get sick of those tacky fake flowers, though. They’re my next target for a makeover.