Crockery in Disguise

Who the hell would have thought that plates could pretend to be something other than what they are?!?

My lovely friend H told me about her clever sister's Christmas present ideas a few months ago. Vintage plates made into cake stands with ironmongery bought off of her majesty's royal internet.

"What a lovely present!" I thought - and said. I sadly would be strung up if I brought any more cake stands into the house, and lots of my friends, while they appreciate the merits and finer points of a cake stand, aren't really the sorts of people that would appreciate one as a present. "Shame". I thought. That's the sort of thing I'd like to make. "Shame I have no use for more cake stands!"

Then, as luck would have it, I, ahem, have a use for some cake stands. I can be a little more candid than usual as I know him indoors won't see this. He's not feeling too good.

Let's just say, I have a very good use for LOTS of cake stands next year.

So, El & Beth's Saturday Afternoon Craft Workshop ( or EBSACw for short) decided to embrace "the cake stand".

I bought three dinner and three side plates in pale pink when Steve and I took the Grandmother to Tenby the other week. £1 for all three and I really like them because they remind me of quilts. They have circles of three decreasing widths embossed into them in a quilting style - they're dead pretty.

The Grandmother gave me a tea set the other week that's lovely but the kind of wrong colours for my requirements. The are cream with a brown dog rose pattern on. El had a brain wave. We could paint the dog roses. We had a little go an lo and behold, dog roses painted red become poppies!

And I purchased another incomplete tea/dinner set this week courtesy of St David's Foundation, so one of those was earmarked for a cake stand too. I did think about making 2 from this set. I've changed my mind. A lot.

So, we got the drill, we measured the plates, marked the plates, located the special arrow-head ceramic drill bit ... and off we went.

Little did we know that we had a traitor in the midst. One of our plates was not what it pretended to be.

Obviously the pink set, the dog rose set, both female. Relatively easy to drill, and ta dah! we have cake stands! We set about the third one. Decorated with pretty orchids and such like one would think it was also female. Not so. It had a distinguishing mark on the bottom "made in Japan". Therefore we could only come to the conclusion that this set was male in disguise as it gave us so much trouble. A Japanese lady boy, we decided. A rugby player, dressed as a delicate lovely, pretty set of table wear. I swear the stuff was made of kryptonite.

There's only going to be one of those cake stands.

Pretty though, ain't they?! Can't wait till they fulfill their purpose ...