Best way to hang a plate

Over the past few months I've been collecting plates to display in my kitchen nook.  It started when I found this adorable gold antique plate at a shop up north.  I loved it's design and imperfections!  I began venturing out to the Goodwill's around me collecting pieces that I thought would fit.  I finally finished my collection today with a few plates from West Elm - the only two that cost more than 99 cents! 

I got lucky finding some great plates, and I just added a few small touches to 3 of them.  One had pink flowers that I changed to a lighter grey color with porcelain paint.  The two with text on them, I hand drew with a industrial strength sharpie. 

I'm not sure (now, of course) why I thought this was the best idea, but I use 3M strips for everything.  I actually hung quite a few (heavy even) items above my fireplace that stayed up for over a year.  I also recently hung some mirrors with 3M strips.  They are really a wonderful tool to have around the house!  Well, come to find out, not so good for plates.  The biggest challenge was the lips on the back of the dishes.  I had quite a few placed on there and, I thought it was a rather secure way to hang them up. 

Here is round one.  They looked amazing, I was loving the spacing of the plates and the coloring.  However, after about an hour, I went outside to finish spray painting, and I hear one hit the ground.  I knew it was bound to happen, but not so soon.  Although I liked the plate on top, I wasn't super worried about replacing it. 

The heart breaking one was my favorite plate, which broke in half after I tried to put it up a second time.   I push just a little too hard and it just cracked.  This was the very first one I found, ugh.  So of course, I had to find a new way to hang them.  After doing some research online, I read that hot glue was actually one of the best and easiest ways to go.  I was little weary, but my mom agreed that it should be pretty secure. 

I thought I might as well test my luck and used a ton of hot glue and a paper clip on each of the plates.  Just make sure your glue is really hot, so the hold will be strong enough.  It looks horrible, but feels really secure, so I placed them up with nails using these hooks.

Now you can see the new arrangement is a little different than the first.  I really liked the first better, of course, but this one is growing on me.  I was able to find a plate to replace the top, but I don't think I'm going to stumble upon the other plate any time soon.  I still feel that I need 2 more to fill in the bottom center gap and one more on the top left.  We'll see what I can find!

Here are two shots of the ones I wrote on with sharpie:

So, if you are ever looking to hang some pretty little plates from your wall, I'd suggest using hot glue.  Or you'll get to hang them all over again! 

Love B