I recently wandered into my local Goodwill store searching for some rustic looking cake stands. What I found was even better! I have thought about making my own cake stands before but all the tutorials I have found have always involved a few things that just don’t work for me. Plates with a lip that interferes with the size of my cakes I want to display  and obvious mis-matching plates and bases that don’t go together. What is the point of making a cake stand and going through all that work if it doesn’t look nice?

So I never took the plunge into the DIY cake stand world until now. While I was perusing the shelves searching for stands, I noticed a huge stack of what looked like clear platters. Intrigued, I took a closer look. It was actually a stack of glass platters from the inside of old microwaves. There were some as big as 18″ across and some as small as 10″.

So I picked up as many as I could find. Each cost me between $2 and $4 for the largest. I knew these would be great for a cake stand because they are heavy duty, tempered glass. I also loved the subtle lip. Some had a slight texture on the underside of the platter but all where smooth on the top.

I also visited my local ROSS which is a discount home goods store. I found a few nice candlesticks that I though would make good cake plate bases. I chose candlesticks that where heavy and had a flat top and bottom. I aslo found a couple glass dessert dishes that I thought would look nice. I wanted a variety of big and small cake plates. Small platters you can put on tall candlesticks. The bigger the platter, the shorter and wider you want the base to be so it is stable.

For this tutorial, I’m going to show you how I made a medium sized cake plate. The base is 10.5″. Perfect for my medium sized wedding cakes.

The first thing I do is wash down, dry and lightly sand the area where the candlestick and the glass plate are going to be glued together. I used gorilla superglue to attach the candlestick to the platter. I let it dry for about 20 minutes before spraying my first coat of paint.

I placed the stand on a 2×4 so that I could get a nice even spray around the edges. I made sure to spray lightly and into all the crevices so there would be no unpainted spots. I sprayed two or three times, letting dry in between coats. Once these where dry, I flipped the stand back over.

The second coat of paint goes the same way. Light spray each layer of paint evenly, letting them dry in between coats.

When the paint goes dull, it is dry enough to apply the clear coat. Clear coat is important to seal in the finish and protect the stand from moisture so you can wipe it clean when you need to.

I am super excited about how these stands turned out! They look like the real thing to me! I can’t wait to make one in every color I think I may have started an addiction.

I also made a stand using an inverted ceramic quiche dish. The fluted edge matched one of my candlesticks perfectly. The perfectly flat bottom was also a little over 10″ so it’s great for my medium sized wedding cakes.

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