Hey Bernice!

If you spend a little time on Pinterest (especially in the the DIY and crafty areas) you would most certainly have stumbled across the use of old plates or pie tins and candle sticks to make a cupcake stand.

Let’s face it, we all have old plates and candle sticks ‘floating’ around the house, that we NEVER use! And if you are lucky enough not to, take yourself down to your local thrift shop and you can probably pick some up for under $5 (or knock on your neighbours door and ask them to donate some of their ‘floaters’ to you!)

Ingenious was my first impression.  You’ve probably noticed I get over-the-top-excited about an upcycling project… So much so that I wanted to give it a go myself.

The two things I love about upcycling…

1. That I can take something that most people would throw away and turn it into something I will use in my home, and love.
2. Keeping what you chose to upcycling out of landfill
3. [Actually there are three things….] stopping myself from buying something new when I really don’t need to.

You can view more of my recent upcycling inspirations on my Upcycling Board on Pinterest:

 The Crafting Chicks have done a great version using pie tins and candle sticks… as featured on the wonderful blog Mary Janes and Galoshes…

And there is another version on Decor-ganize crafts.

So here’s my attempt.

I gathered my ‘floaters’ from around the house, and filled any gaps with a couple of items from the thrift store. I worked out that the lighter the material each piece is made from the better. I glued my bits together, so weight was important. I chose to use two plates. You can have more than that, it looks great as they gradually get smaller as you go higher.

Using craft glue (or any other strong glue) I glued the wooden candle stick to the bottom plate (which was actually a tray, made of tin and very light)…

As a side note… I quite liked the saying on the tray “Friends are flowers in the garden of life”

I glued a narrow vase to the smaller glass plate….

Once both were dry (and secure – it pays to test the strength of your gluing. Sometimes you need to do it again, I did!). I then glued the wooden candle stick to the bottom of the glass plate…

Once the glue was dry, I painted it completely in a high gloss enamel (left over from my dining chair transformation project)

then it was ready for Heidi’s first birthday…

As you can see there are no rules when making these… do as many tiers as you like, use what ever you can find, and you don’t even need to paint them. For my purpose there was so much going on with her cupcakes, I needed something neutral to hold them.

Go one, make an upcycler of yourself… create something to hold all the chocolate eggs this Easter, or the hot cross buns, then you can re-use it all year round.

Bernice