Cardinal on a Silver Charger Plate

After Christmas, I totally "scored" a huge stack of charger plates for next to nothing! Now if you know me at all, I have always said, "I do NOT paint on PLASTIC!"... Well, maybe I have changed my mind and besides the back says they are Lacquer Ware, now that sounds much better than plastic, right???

I actually had to ask my fellow painters on Tole Painters Unite, how to prep the surface. You see what scares me about plastic is that I am afraid of the paint not staying on. Those gals over at TPU never let you down, they gave me tons of ideas on how to do it, but I really loved the antique looking silver of the plate; so I simply used DecoArt Multi-Purpose Sealer to prep the surface...and it worked out great!

When I was setting up my craft room, I was sorting through some of my magazines and came across this lovely pattern by Sherry C. Nelson and I just knew I had to paint this cardinal! The pattern came from The Decorative Painter magazine (Issue #4~1991...Yikes!!!) so here's proof that good design never goes out of style!