How to Make a Plate Wreath – the Damage Free Way!

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!

DIY Plate wreath kellyelko.com

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).”

DIY plate wreath making supplies kellyelko.com

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. 

This post contains affiliate links which means if you make a purchase, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. 

Wreath Making Supplies

How to make a DIY plate wreath - without damaging your plates! kellyelko.com

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.

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

Styrofoam wreath and wire wreath forms kellyelko.com

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.

Wreath making DIY kellyelko.com

Lay moss covered wreath aside.

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

How to make a DIY plate wreath tutorial kellyelko.com

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.

DIY plate wreath tutorial kellyelko.com

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.

DIY plate wreath tutorial kellyelko.com

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.

Plate wreath tutorial kellyelko.com

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.

Genius way to adhere plates to each other - picture hanging strips kellyelko.com

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

How to make a plate wreath - without damaging your precious plates! Love this blue and red plate wreath kellyelko.com

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.

Here is another gorgeous plate wreath using colorful floral plates perfect for spring …

Colorful floral plate wreath / kellyelko.com

More DIY Wreaths Here

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37 Comments

  1. What a Beautiful Wreath and what a great idea. Thank you for sharing it. I would love to have one of these plate wreaths in my dining room. And yes, a Christmas plate wreath would be lovely!

  2. I made this, but sooo heavy. I had to end up leaning it on a mantle!
    When I do again I will use melamine/plastic plates!

  3. I have a small collection of bone dishes (crescent shaped) that I would like to try this project. Do you think the plate hangers would fit bone dishes?

  4. Your wreath is beautiful – but I could NOT get it to work for me! I tried and tried, thank goodness I did not use cherished plates that would have broken! It is also very heavy if you use china pates and can get them to stay put to try to hang!

  5. You don’t show how to attach the little plates. I don’t understand the command hook placement. Thank you for sharing.

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