When I stumbled across this gorgeous DIY plate wreath, I fell in love and knew I had to share it with you! I’ve seen plate wreaths before but they all use heavy duty glue which will ruin your beautiful plates! This method of wreath making will not harm your precious plates! I love the idea of using mismatched vintage china from the thrift store or plates handed down from family members to create a unique wreath for any season or holiday.

I asked the creator of this stunning wreath, Suzanne Zingg, if I could share the how to with you and she graciously said yes!

Suzanne says, “This is a great project for displaying random mismatched small plates, butter pats and shallow bowls without damaging them. You can hang these on doors, cabinets, walls or on bookcases – anywhere that doesn’t get a lot of movement. (I wouldn’t hang them on a high traffic front door or a cabinet door that gets lots of use).”

Hi, it’s Kelly here chiming in with my two cents … I would probably take the easy route and use a pre-made wreath to attach the wire wreath form to or you could use a grapevine wreath and secure the plates directly to that. If you decide to use a pre-made wreath, you can omit steps 1 and 2. 

Wreath Making Supplies:

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• Assortment of coordinating small plates. The wreath can get heavy so you will want to keep the plates small. I used mostly salad and bread and butter plates from 5″ to 7″ then added tiny butter pats to fill in and add interest.

• 1 – 14″ Wire wreath form

• 1 – 14″ Foam wreath form (Extruded or Styrofoam – both work well). Similar sizes should be fine but try to find a wire and foam wreath close in size.

Note from Kelly: you can use a pre-made decorative wreath instead of the styrofoam wreath form. 

• Small wire plate holders

• Small Velcro Command Strips for attaching butter pats and tiny cups

• 30 gauge wire and wire cutters

• Decorative wired ribbon (about 4 yards if you are making a bow, 1 yard if only using to hang)

• Sheet moss

• Floral pins or hot glue gun

• Faux or real greenery

• Optional glue dots if attaching small decorative items to plates – like in the photo of red and blue plate below)

How to Make a Plate Wreath

1. Cover foam wreath with sheet moss using the floral pins to secure. You can hot glue the moss in place but be careful as it is easy to burn yourself when working with moss. Concentrate on covering just the outside and inside edges of the ring, the back and top will not show once completed and hung.

2. Attach faux or fresh greenery to outside of the moss covered wreath using floral pins or by sticking the stem into the foam. You can also use picks, garland or whatever greenery you like. The greenery on the red and blue wreath was fresh.

Lay moss covered wreath aside.

3. Arrange plates on the wire wreath to get a feel for placement and number needed.

4. Attach wire plate hanger to each plate and or bowl. Attach a 30″ piece of floral wire, to the wire plate hanger as shown below and then wire the plate to the wire wreath.

5. Working one at a time from the back side of the plate (upside down) continue adding plates to the wire wreath (see photo below). Notice I used a long (30″) piece of wire to attach each plate. You will use these long wire ends to attach the plate wreath to the foam wreath later so leave the long wire ends attached. When arranging your plates you will want to overlap them slightly. Consider patterns and colors in your arrangement.

6. Once all the large plates are in place wire the plate wreath on top of the moss covered foam wreath using the long wire ends, twisting to secure. Trim excess wire once secured.

7. Turn wreath over and fluff greenery, adding more where need.

8. Wrap ribbon around both wreaths for hanger and glue or tie a knot to secure two cut ends together.

9. Make and attach optional bow.

10. To attach the butter pats, I used four layers of Velcro Command Strips (see below). The backs of the pats are not flat so I needed to build up the strips so the pats could sit flat on the plates. Position the butter pats between bigger plates. I like to cover up the wire holders whenever I can so I often place a butter pat over the top of the hook of the wire hangers.

11. The silver sugar tongs, tea spoons and fork in the red and blue wreath were attached with glue dots.

Thanks Suzanne for letting me share this fun plate wreath! The possibilities are endless and I’m thinking how fun it would it be to create a Christmas plate wreath!

Don’t miss Suzanne’s stunning Ornament Wreaths here or visit Suzanne at her blog, My Retired Life on the Prairie.

More DIY Wreaths Here

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