It is time to decorate the exterior of the house of the Fourth of July, and normally I would hang my giant beadboard flag on the front of the house:

But this year I was using it on one of my mantles, which meant I needed to come up with something else.

Whatever I came up with needed to be pretty large, since I wanted to be able see it from the road and fill up the space.

Then I was walking through the dollar store looking for something that would work, when I found these paper plates:
I loved the shape and the fact they were shiny and metallic.   So I decided to make a wreath out of them by hot gluing the to an old wreath form I previously used for my fall doily wreath.

When gluing them on, it was definitely easier to glue the plates down by use the weight of the wreath form and keeping the plates flush against a flat surface:


Once the first layer of plates was on, it was much simpler to add the second layer:


Here is what it looked like plain:
 I love how it almost looks like metal.  When I asked people what they thought it was made of on Facebook last night, nobody guessed paper plates!  Pottery barn used to sell a metal star wreath (which is no longer available) but if I could have found some silver plates, I bet I could have a similar look:
I didn’t want to leave it plain since I wanted an excuse to use my Silhouette, so I added the first line from the Star Spangled Banner:


I used contact paper to transfer the vinyl letters on because I didn’t want to use anything too sticky that would damage the plates:

 I was able to curve the words in the Silhouette software.
I love how wild it is and from a distance it really does look like metal.  Because the plates are wax coated I think it should hold up to the weather.  (We don’t get a ton of rain anyhow, but it probably will get sprayed by the sprinklers quite a bit)


If you liked this project, I have a bunch of wreaths listed under the "Crafts" tab at the top of the page.