If you have nev­er heard of Rae Dunn it is very pos­si­ble that you may be liv­ing under a rock. It is seri­ous­ly all the rage in farm­house styled décor right now. I must admit I am not entire­ly sure why since noth­ing about the sim­ple designs scream farm­house to me…BUT…they are sim­ply presh…you know what else they are? Expen­sive! At least some of the time any­way. If you’re one of the lucky few that has been able to snag some amaz­ing deals on this adorable col­lec­tion at TjMaxx then kudos, I tip my hat to you my friend. Heck, maybe you’re like me and some­times just walk through retail stores for DIY inspi­ra­tion. I could lit­er­al­ly spend thou­sands on all the Rae Dunn my heart desires but that’s just not practical. 

My busy work sched­ule and mom­my-hood leaves me very lit­tle time (or mon­ey) to spend on the deep­est desires of my cre­ative heart. So I did what any good DIY’er would do and decid­ed to make some fes­tive “Rae Dunn” plates myself. And that’s not even the best part. They cost a whop­ping $1 each!!! Yes you read that right! I mean if you want to get tech­ni­cal I had to buy the vinyl for my Cri­cut but I already had this on hand so I was in business.

Now let me just throw this out there. This is def­i­nite­ly NOT my orig­i­nal idea. I have seen count­less exam­ples of this very DIY on Pin­ter­est. So I’m sor­ry to tell you that this won’t be any­thing ground-break­ing but it IS my first time cre­at­ing my own Rae Dunn inspired pieces and oh my good­ness I am excit­ed to share it with you! 

Of course you’re gonna need a Cri­cut cut­ting machine to even begin with this project. If this isn’t some­thing read­i­ly avail­able I rec­om­mend find­ing some­one to make your cuts for you. You can get words cut for fair­ly cheap. I’m not going to go into detail about using the machine. That is a post all by itself. I am going to safe­ly assume you know how and where to get your words cut. 

For this project to have that authen­tic Rae Dunn look the font is of utmost importance.

I used The Skin­ny Dunn font and Dol­lar Tree plates and I am thrilled with the authen­tic look. 

Make sure the sur­face of your plate is clean and dry.

Then peel the back of your Trans­fer Tape slow­ly from your vinyl. 

Place your decal in the cen­ter of your plate. Be CERTAIN of your place­ment because there is no going back from this point.

After its placed, I sug­gest run­ning your fin­ger firm­ly across each let­ter as if you are trac­ing them. This helps to ensure the vinyl has made con­tact with the plate.

Start­ing with the cor­ner, slow­ly lift up the top edge of the trans­fer tape. It is impor­tant to pull your vinyl straight down in one, slow mov­ing motion. 

Do not pull diag­o­nal­ly, you run the risk of your vinyl not stick­ing and stretch­ing your let­ters. If your let­ters don’t seem to want to stick sim­ply place them back down on your plate and rub your fin­ger firm­ly across the area that’s being stubborn.

Sim­ply repeat this process using what­ev­er words and dish­es you wish to trans­form! It’s real­ly that easy!

And of course dis­play them for the world to see!

Stay tuned to learn how to cre­ate your very own barn wood plate rack!

-PIN FOR LATER-