Tissue Paper Plates

This is the project I've been dying to try. If napkins can be decoupaged onto things, why can't tissue paper? What if I printed the tissue paper first?

 I have a large stash of white plates I've picked up at thrift stores for less than $1 each. I've been wanting some plates with vintage black and white labels for my daughter's black and white bathroom, and the Graphics Fairy has a large collection of beautiful labels. I used four vintage apothecary labels in black and white (here, here, here, and here).

I resized the images in Photoshop Elements and printed them out onto regular white tissue paper. This is the type of tissue paper you wad up and throw away after you've opened a gift. Stop doing that! Run a hot iron over that wrinkly tissue paper, and it's ready for art.

As I mentioned yesterday with the napkins, a flat piece of paper needs to be snipped to provide ease when gluing it down to a curved surface. I snipped around the blank areas, avoiding the writing as much as I could.

Again, I used varnish to glue the tissue down to the plate. Wrinkles are unavoidable. I used a very wet flat nylon craft brush to smooth out the air bubbles and smooth the wrinkles as much as possible. A dry brush will tear the tissue.

After the plates were dry, I gave them several coats of Rustoleum Crystal Clear Enamel spray, hot glued a few pop tabs onto the back, and actually got them hung in the bathroom on the same day I finished them.

And yes, it was worth the effort.

Update: I use a Kodak ESP 5250 printer. Here's how to print on tissue paper the easy way!

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Thanks,
Aimee