Chintz cake stands are making a comeback as shabby chic becomes desirable. Cake stands are great for displaying cakes at parties and BBQ’s and are space saving when table space for food is limited. Cake stands are really easy to make, and once you have made one and discovered how easy it is, you’ll want to make more.
The first thing to do is to find 3 plates in descending sizes. The plates can be matching and that looks really nice, but equally odd plates can be as attractive. If you are choosing odd plates its nice if you stick to a theme, so for example collect 3 pink plates, or plates with spots. Sticking to a theme with odd plates gives the cake stand some continuity. Car boots and charity shops are great places to source decorative plates for cake stand crafting.
You will also need a 6mm carbide spear tip drill bit to make holes in the plates. The carbide spear head drill bit is much easier to use than a diamond drill bit because it doesn’t slide around on the plate when drilling the hole. The carbide spear tip drill bits are inexpensive, costing just a couple of pounds.
You will also need a cake stand handle with a bolt and washers. Again these can be bought quite cheaply for a brand new handle. Ebay have cake stand handles listed from around two pounds, which come complete with the washers and bolt.
To make your cake stand you need to give the plates a good wash and a thorough drying. And then you need to mark the centre of the plate with a permanent marker. The easiest way to find the centre of the plate is to draw around the plate on some scrap paper, and cut it out. Then fold the paper in half and in half again. Then at the centre point, snip off the tip. Open out the template plate and you should now have a diamond shape in the middle. Place the paper over the top of the plate, with the pattern side of the plate upwards and mark a dot on the plate through the hole in the paper.
And now you’re ready to drill. Set the drill up with the 6mm carbide spear tip drill bit, and make sure that the drill is not set on hammer drill. The hammer drill setting will break the plates.
Pour some cold water onto the plate that you are going to drill; the water will help to keep the drill bit cool. The water also prolongs the life of your drill bit.
Now begin to drill on the mark that you made. Try to keep the drill as straight as possible when drilling, so that your hole is straight through the plate, this will avoid your handle being at a ‘funny’ angle when the cake stand is made up. You should drill slowly and only apply a light amount of pressure.
If the drill bit develops yellow, brown, blue or black ‘burn’ marks around the tip, you need to slow down and drill slower. This is a sign that you are drilling too fast.
Once you have drilled all three plates, clean the plates up and then you can start to build the cake stand.
Starting at the bottom, push the bolt through the bottom of the biggest plate and on the bolt add a washer to sit on the face of the plate. Then screw on the first straight part of the cake stand handle. Onto the op of the spindle add another washer and the middle sized plate, then another washer, and then screw on the second spindle. On the top of the spindle add a washer, the smallest plate, another washer and then finally the handle spindle part.
If your cake stand handle is at a bit of a funny angle you can correct this by gently bending the spindles.
See how easy it is to make a beautiful shabby chic cake stand? So why not try something a bit different, like a strawberries and cream stand. Simply substitute plates for 2 dishes. The larger dish at the bottom for strawberries and the top smaller dish for whipped cream. What about a chocolate fondue stand? Again have a large dish at the bottom to hold the strawberries and marshmallows for dunking. The second plate can hold tea light candles to melt the chocolate and on the top tier have a small bowl or a china cup to hold the melted chocolate.
With homemade cake stands the possibilities are endless, and you can easily create beautiful table decorations and centrepieces that look professionally made at a fraction of the cost of a shop bought one. So get down to your local charity shop and see old plates with new eyes.
