I’ve been wanting a little change in the dishes hanging above the window in our breakfast area…but what to do?

After not kicking me off the internet for using their duct Tape instead of paint to make a diamond wall, ScotchBlue Brand asked me if I could come up with a project for their painters tape.  I don’t know how well you know me but I’ll go ahead and tell you, I LOVE challenges like this.  It was the perfect limitation I needed for creating something fresh for my boring-to-me dish hanging collection over our window. I’m too cheap to buy NEW dishes but, if I can create something else out  of what I have? Perfect.

I decided to try gold leaf. Here’s the kit I bought, it was about $10 from Hobby Lobby, I only used the gold leaf sheets and the adhesive from the kit. I also got a little sponge brush thing, and of course the ScotchBlue Tape and a few random white dishes.

The process is SO easy. The worst part is waiting for the adhesive to get tacky. They say to wait 40 minutes but I only waited about ten, that’s as long as I could stand it.

So you just tape off however you like.  I wanted a faceted/geometric look so I just played around.  I got a ruler out but didn’t actually use it, I feel sorry for my poor rulers and tape measures, they rarely get used.  Once you tape, use the brush to paint the adhesive inside the tape lines.

WAIT AT LEAST TEN MINUTES. If you don’t wait at least ten minutes it won’t be sticky enough. And then the glue won’t grab the gold. And then your leaf will rip. And then you will have to curse the person who came up with gold leaf and the fact that is one atom thick. And then you will have to fill in all those tiny cracks with one atom thick gold leaf particles that you try to catch as they taunt you as they float in front of you in the air.  And then you will find that it’s actually kind of fun too.

Then…

…then you do it right and you are on a roll and you are the master of the golden leaf!

Here’s a close up of the wrinkles.  Just press ’em down and you are good.  I like my leaf to look really wrinkly, I hope that’s okay with the official gold leaf people, I didn’t really check to make sure I was doing it correctly and I don’t want a riot on my blog, PLEASE tell me wrinkly leaf is normal, I have no time in my life to try to get perfectly flat gold leaf especially when the wrinkles looks so good–very Anthropologized.

Once your leaf sticks on, you take a fresh brush and kind of press down and rub it around so the excess particles come off.

Then just pull off your tape.  It worked perfectly!  And if you like, you can add more tape and more leaf. Leaves?

I used up five of the six sheets on these dishes and I used the last one a bowl.  If I would have had more sheets I would have kept going because people, gold leafing is REALLY fun and relaxing.  I highly recommend it.

Here’s a close up of the first one I did where I had no idea what I was doing and it still looks fine.  Plus, if you are hanging them it’s more about the impact they have as a whole than what they look like from one inch away.

I really like how they updated the collection and took it from country to modern.

To hang the butter dish I just hot glued two upholstery tacks to the back and then pushed it into the wall.

Here’s my big plate wall & some other ways to hang dishes.

The gold leaf kit I bought came with a sealer but I didn’t even use it.  I figure I have a million white dishes and choosing not to eat off these three (a butter dish whose lid I broke, a dollar store plate and a $6 tray) wouldn’t make or break my family having something to eat off of.  But if you wanted to use them for actual things, you’d need to look into sealing them, most likely with that sealer that came in the little kit.

 

Find more creative ideas using ScotchBlue Tape at these sites

Special thanks to ScotchBlue Tape for sponsoring this post and not being one of those companies that contacts bloggers telling them they want to write a boring post for them.  It’s so refreshing to actually be challenged to use a product creatively!

Have you ever gold leafed before?