I was hesitant to share my latest little crafty endeavour with you as it was so similar to a few other things I’ve recently done that I feared I was turning into a one-trick pony. But it came out so cute and it was so easy, I figured you might like it even if my DIY chargers today may look a little familiar!

I’m rather obsessed with gold sticky back plastic at the moment and any excuse I can use it, I will. It’s essentially the 2017 version of my obsession with marble sticky back plastic (between 2014-2016, I used the marble one on no less than 4 projects). So this will be the third time I’ve used the gold except that this time I jazzed up a set of cheap and cheerful white plastic chargers.

I love giving a little glam to a table setting and these DIY chargers are pretty much as glam as they get. My original project using this method was this DIY Kelly Wreastler Channels inspired tray and it is very similar in design. What can I say, I like this pattern A LOT.

The best thing is is that it’s super cheap and super easy. I got my chargers from Amazon* but I wouldn’t doubt you could find similar in places like Dunelm Mill, Wilko, your local supermarket or even a pound shop. You can even use an existing set if you have something knocking about and just spray paint it white to start.

As you don’t eat off of these plates (they are just placed decoratively under the plate you’d eat from), there wouldn’t be any issue with using them as I’m sharing today. I wouldn’t recommend doing this for normal dinner plates – I doubt they’d survive the frequent washing and I’m not entirely convinced it’d be very sanitary regardless! But they can easily be wiped clean and used again and again when used to dress up your table.

Materials

Instructions

Using the guidelines on the back of your sticky back plastic, start by cutting thin strips of 1cm and .5cm widths that are longer than the diameter of your charger plates. My chargers were 33cm in diameter so my strips were 1cm x 45cm and .5cm x 45cm (the width of the sticky back plastic roll) so there will be an overhang no matter where you place them. You’ll see why we need it longer in a second. I cut about 4 wide strips and about 6-8 thinner strips per plate.

Start with a few of the wider ones, removing the backing and pressing down, allowing for an overhang at the edges. Make sure the plastic is stuck well as you go and remove any bubbles with your fingers. If you have a lip on your charge plate as I did, make sure you press the strip firmly so it sits nice and flush and there’s no gap between the plastic and the charger plate.

Next, overlap a few strips in a random pattern along the plate and continue until you like the resulting pattern. Remember that you can always pull up and reset the strip if you aren’t happy with the placement.

One you have all your strips on, flip the plate over and place it on your cutting mat right side down. Remove the excess strips with a Stanley knife, using the side of the charger as a guide to give yourself a nice clean cut.

That’s it! Repeat for all your chargers and you’ve got your full set.

I really love how these came out and they work so well with my various plates. I combined them here with a set of black & white spotty plates from H&M (sadly, no longer in stock) and a set of gold spotty plates from Zara Home (again, old, so no longer in stock). The napkins from Halsted Design finish off my table setting along with some gold rimmed wine glasses from West Elm (2016 sales – sorry again) and gold cutlery (an eBay find).

These literally took me about 20 minutes to make and genuinely couldn’t have been easier. I’m thinking a black charger or pale pink with gold would look amazing as well so I might end up making more of these sets! You could even use tape in this pattern, spray paint your paint and remove the tape leaving the pattern in place – so lots of options here! What do you think? Is this a DIY you’d try?