I bought this little plate about six years ago at Home Goods when Scott and I were living in a small city apartment. I think I had it propped on the mantle there but, honestly, I can’t even remember for sure. It’s never had a permanent home since we bought our house and had been unceremoniously stuffed into a cabinet for storage for a while. I pulled it out recently to act as a catch-all bowl on our hall table where Scott could toss his wallet and phone when he walked in the door. It functioned perfectly but I wasn’t loving the look.
Just kind of dark and dull, right? I love the antique-gold carved handles and gold etched rim but felt like those details just got lost in the busy-ness of the pattern.
A few coats of paint later this homely plate went from dark and drab to light and lovely!
I primed the surface first with some leftover latex primer I had on hand, then used a foam brush (I found a bristle brush left too many brush marks) to carefully paint several coats of Martha Stewart Multi-Surface Satin Acrylic Craft Paint in Summer Linen (from Michaels). I was very careful to avoid the gold rim and also checked after each coat to make sure I had smoothed out any raised ridges of paint. I should have kept count, but I think it took four coats to fully cover the pattern underneath. I let each coat dry a couple hours to overnight before adding another.
After the paint had dried I used a silkscreen stencil (also Martha Stewart from Michaels) to stencil the “B” on the plate with the same paint in Yellow Gold. When that had dried to the touch, I stenciled the dotted circle around it.
