DIY Cake Stand With Materials From the Hardware Store

Submitted by nicole on Mon, 09/23/2013 - 11:35

As soon as I came up with the concept of the A is for Addalyn birthday brunch, I knew I wanted to use alphabet blocks in the design. Pretty quickly, I came up with the idea of using stacked alphabet blocks as risers for a DIY tiered cake stand.

I already had the blocks (rescued from the bag of stuff heading off to Goodwill...whenever I get around to taking it). I just needed disks in graduated sizes. I didn't feel like cutting my own wooden disks, but I thought that perhaps I might be able to find some at my local Lowe's home improvement store.

Turns out I was wrong. While they did have some nice round wooden disks pre-cut, they started at 24" in diameter and went up from there. Whoops. I started wandering aimlessly around the store, looking for inspiration.

And I found it--the perfect item for this craft. Grinder disks!

They come in a perfect range of sizes. They're inexpensive (just a few dollars each). They're incredibly sturdy. And there's already a hole drilled in the dead center. Score!

The first step in the transformation was a good coating of spray paint (also from Lowe's).

I liked the way it looked just painted, but I had some lovely scrapbook paper that I wanted to use somewhere in the design, so I decided to cover the tops with paper for this party. It was a simple matter to trace the circle, cut it out, and tack it on with a bit of hot glue (easy to remove later, for the next party).

I have plans for these disks later, so I just used my hot glue gun to stack and attach the blocks and the disks. If I had wanted this to be a permanent piece, I would have drilled a hole through all the blocks, and glued a dowel through the center of the whole thing. But I have plans to renovate and reuse these items in an entirely new way, so hot glue was the perfect solution.