{create} custom painted plates

As you all saw Wednesday, I created custom painted dessert plates for my Thanksgiving Table. Today, I'm back with quick and easy directions for creating your own painted plates! Painted plates are a super easy way to dress up a table and add a splash of color if you have all white dishes - like me! :)

The goal of these plates was to create a layered, textural and colorful look. I wanted them to be something I could use year round and that would feel special for desserts or appetizers.

With that in mind, I started with four white dessert plates (from the Dollar Store!) and a gold paint pen. I freehanded a different design onto each and let them all dry.

I found these great stencils at Michael's -- they're Martha Stewart adhesive silkscreen stencils and they were FANTASTIC for working with the curves of the plate. (I was going to link to them, but Michael's website is seriously impossible to navigate (AKA, I'm lazy!), but they're easy to find in the store). The silkscreen means there isn't an actual cut out where the stencil is, but a million tiny little dots that the paint goes through. You can't tell their dots on the finished project and it made stenciling practically fool proof.

The colors, which went along with my Thanksgiving inspiration and nicely tie into colors I use all year-round, were Martha's Green Olive and Wild Blueberry. Make sure you're using paint that cures onto glass and can be washed later! The key to painting, as with all stencils, is to not overload the paintbrush. Or, in this case the foam blotter :). I tried both a brush and foam and the foam worked so much better -- I think because of the silkscreen. You can see in the photo on the left that I dabbed off a lot of paint before I ever touched the stencil.

Here's the first round of stenciling. I applied a stencil or two per plate, let them dry for a hour, and then came back and to do another layer on each plate. The project will stretch out over a day, but applying each layer is so quick that it doesn't feel time consuming.

And these are the four finished plates. Each plate has about three or four layers. I just kept going until they felt done to me, which in this case was layered and textural, but not too busy.

And see? They display dessert nicely ... as if macarons ever look bad ;).

Friends, have you ever painted glass before? Or any sort of dishes? It's a great easy weekend project if you're looking to spice up your Thanksgiving table!

Have a great weekend all!

**Update! I'm linking this post up to Beneath My Heart's November link party!