Old Meets New: Upscale Cake Plate

A got a text from a friend a few weeks ago saying that she had several glass cake plates and would I be interested in having them?  She knew I was crafty and thought they might be something I'd like.

Well...

Of course, I wanted them!

So she dropped off 4 clear glass cake plates, including one with a cover, and I got busy.

Not needing all four for myself, I decided to create a holiday platter for my mom to use during the season at one of her many dinners.

Here's how it all went down.

This cake plate is perfect for cakes, pies, cookies, cheeses, veggies, or really any food items you want to arrange and display.

I made sure to wash it again (my friend had cleaned them up already) and let it air dry to avoid getting lint on it.

I knew I wanted to adhere the vinyl to the BACKSIDE of the plate so that it showed through the glass.

I didn't want food directly touching the vinyl.  This is not for a food safety issue but for a cleaning issue.  The front can be washed, but the back should be wiped gently with a damp cloth to avoid messing up the vinyl.

I used a ruler to find the width of the wreath that I wanted to cut with my Cricut. 

I chose the 9-inch mark as a general width.

I flipped the plate over, noting that there was a slight angle from edge to pedestal, but not enough that it would affect the design placement.

I logged on to the Cricut Design Space, typed in "wreath" in the search bar, and then spent a few minutes searching through all the options that were already loaded into their SVG files.

I could also create my own wreath with a download, but there were enough options for me on the design space, so I didn't bother going that route.

I liked this simple, one cut option.

I placed it in my projects file, sized it to the 9-inch mark, and set my Cricut to cut.

I loaded this olive green vinyl into the machine and pressed the cut button.

Once it was done cutting, I removed the un-needed vinyl around the pattern and laid my cake plate over it to see the placement.

It was perfect!

Since I wanted to "Frankenstein" this wreath (take different elements and combine them into my own design), I searched for "berries" and found this pattern.

I duplicated the one so I had 16 in all and cut them in a cranberry red color from vinyl.

I knew I could snip to make them smaller as well.

I went to work placing the berries over, under, and around the green leaves of the wreath.

When doing this, I had to remember that the side that was showing was actually going to be the underside of the wreath and would not be the part that was showing through the glass from below.

So, keeping that in mind, I used my weeding tool (looks like a dental tool) to gently lift and place the berries throughout the wreath.

When I was finished I had this.

Using strips of transfer tape to avoid wasting the middle of a large sheet of transfer, I covered the entire wreath.

I swiped the back of the plate with alcohol, letting it air dry, then placed and transferred the vinyl to the back.

Here's how it turned out.

I gave it to mom when she came over for Thanksgiving Dinner.  She loved it!

It was such an easy project and it looks so pretty on its own.

She can use it for food or even place a candle or flower arrangement in the middle and keep it on her table through the holidays.

If you don't have a Cricut machine, Etsy has tons of vinyl wreaths that you can purchase and do the exact same thing.  If you have to purchase one with a middle image, you can cut out that image and use it on something else - two for the price of one.  You can also contact many of those sellers and request a custom wreath as well.

I've still got three more cake plates to work with...

Hmmm...now who to make them for?