A Stars and Stripes Forever Tablescape

This is a 4th of July Tablescape that I did several years ago that has been pinned more than any others on my Pinterest Tablescapes board. I decided to post it again because it is one of my favorites. The patriotic tablecloth and napkins came from Sur la Table several years ago. They are soft and heavy, really good quality, and I love the simple design.

I have always loved a red, white, and blue color design. For many years the family room was decorated in that color scheme and there are still a few of those design elements left in that room. I have a weakness for patriotic tableware. These salad and dinner plates are melamine and they came from Sur la Table several years ago. They sometimes have cute holiday designs and I wait for the after season sales and buy online.

The red place mats came from Pier 1 many years ago. I have several colors of this placemat.

My phone camera changes the red tone a bit, it is actually more of a burgundy red.

The chargers are plastic, I can’t remember where I bought them. I have had them for several years.

I bought the frosted white flatware on sale online at Wayfair a few years ago, it is made by Cambridge. It is 18/0 instead of 18/10 so the fork tines are a bit sharper than I would like but I really liked the frosted color. Wayfair has really good sales on flatware sometimes. You can read my blog post about what to consider when you are buying flatware here.

I am using my Waterford Marquis Brookside goblets on this tablescape and I added the matching iced teas too. I think if I were starting a tablescaping hobby, a set of red goblets would be one of my first purchases. They can be used several times a year. I bought a set because I love the fact that they are a bit taller than other goblets and the design goes with everything. You can read my blog post about what to consider when you are buying goblets (including the colors I use the most) for your tablescaping collection here.

I bought the napkin rings at Pottery Barn several years ago. The napkins and tablecloth came from Sur la Table several years ago. They are soft and heavy, really good quality, and I love the simple design.

I can’t remember where I bought the metal star place card holders. I have had them for years. The set came with three navy, three red, three turquoise, and three white stars in the set.

I can’t remember where I bought the salt and pepper shakers. My family jokes because sometimes I put special salt and pepper shakers on the table and I forget to fill them!

This set of creamers or small pitchers makes me laugh. We are a two party household so when I saw them I had to have them. They are from Fitz and Floyd, I can’t remember where I bought them. I have had them for a long time.

I have had this Uncle Sam Nutcracker for many many years. He is much loved but he needs some paint touch ups. I never remember that until I see him again. Maybe this year I will do it! I don’t have any idea where I bought him.

I collected Uncle Sams for a while when the family room was decorated with red, white, and blue and I bought this Uncle Sam pitcher several years ago, I can’t remember where. It was made by Department 56. I have always loved pitchers, I think because with a large family we always had one on the table while I was growing up. My mother never allowed a milk carton on the table! One of my four brothers tried to sneak one on a few times but it never worked. Then they would sometimes put it on the floor next to their chair! I love this pitcher, it is one of my favorites.

Three cheers for the red, white, and blue!

To see 200 other tablescapes that I have created including 13 other 4th of July tablescapes, please click here. If you are on Facebook, join my Tablescape Ideas group! Just click on the Facebook Search box at the top of the page and type in Tablescape Ideas. (Please note that if I don’t see any Facebook activity on your Facebook profile page, I won’t add you because of fear of someone having taken over your Facebook account.) Don’t miss my Tablescaping How-To section at the top of this blog post for more tablescaping tips and tricks.

I put a new tablescape on my blog every week so please check back!

Anyone for a Game of Cards? Have a seat at my Card Tablescape!

I did this playing cards tablescape several years ago and then posted it again two years ago. It has always been one of my favorites so I decided to post it again for new readers.

This is a tablescape that I did several years ago but I wasn’t blogging then and didn’t take very many photos so I decided to recreate it. I changed out the centerpiece but the rest is the same as the original version. It is one of my favorites. It started with a vintage tablecloth that I am using here as an overlay over a black tablecloth I bought on Amazon. I will show a bit of the smaller card design tablecloth later. I bought it on Ebay several years ago. It has a diamond shaped card design but it’s buried under things!

I have four different place settings with the four different card suits and then I repeated two. For each place setting the salad plate design matches the small bowl, the base of the clear glass, and the place card. For fun, I added the names of some of my female ancestors on the place cards although I suspect a few of them would think card playing was inappropriate!

I had found a different set of card salad plates at a garage sale years ago and that with the tablecloth started the design of the table. Then I found this set somewhere, maybe HomeGoods and I decided to use them instead. They were made by I. Godinger & Co..

I really like the card suit design around the edge of the plates.

For design purposes there are two extra plates in the plate pile on this table. The next plate down is my every day red Fiesta salad plate. When we remodeled the kitchen a couple years ago it became a white kitchen with red accents and I bought new red every day dishes.

The next plate down is a black dinner plate, Fun Factory made by Waechtersbach in Germany. I use this plate often, black plates are very versatile. I think I found it at HomeGoods.

This large dinner/charger plate is from Pottery Barn, pattern is Cambria in red. A charger plate needs to be about 11”-12” in diameter and this plate is about 11 3/4”. I keep looking at the other colors because it is a great plate and can be used as both a dinner plate and a charger. It is microwave and dishwasher safe too. It would be a great plate to start a charger collection. (This pattern is currently on clearance at Pottery Barn, 3/12/21.)

The final plate down is my Antique Beaded charger from William Sonoma that I bought several years ago. This is a photo from a different tablescape. I realized I hadn’t posted a photo of the charger in this post.

The flatware is made by D & D Inox in Italy. I bought it at Neiman Marcus or Bloomingdales during a major sale a few years ago. There are similar patterns available online now. This set pops up quite a bit in my table settings.

The red goblets are Waterford Marquis, I use them frequently in tablescapes. I found the same goblet in clear at HomeGoods and snapped them up! These goblets are a bit taller than most and I like that. I bought these black goblets on Ebay and they were one of the first sets that I bought several years ago. They are Lenox Midnight Mood black glass water goblets and they were made between 1974 and 1982. They are 7 1/4 inches tall. When I started buying goblets I didn’t pay attention to the height but now I like to buy goblets that are at least about 8 inches tall because my table is large and I think they show better. I found the drinking glass at a garage sale.

Can’t remember where I found the clear card glasses but it was in the middle of planning the first card setting I did and they were perfect! Each one has a different card suit on the bottom. They are really fun!

I bought the small card suit bowls on Ebay several years ago.

Can’t remember where I bought the napkin rings but it was probably Crate and Barrel or Pottery Barn on sale. They were some of the first ones I bought. I had someone on Etsy make the napkins for me. I love the way they look on this tablescape.

I love this vintage tablecloth. It is small but I can use it as an overlay.

I think I bought the place card holders at Oriental Trading online. They are a good source for small inexpensive table theme items.

Found this salt and pepper set and the following one at garage sales.

I found the large red dice at a garage sale, it has a top that opens and it actually swivels on the base. It is sitting on the box that some of the salad plates came in. I had to rescue that box from my husband trying to throw it away several times over the past couple of years. I knew it would come in handy someday! Can’t remember where I bought the card theme glass garlands but it was online somewhere.

Ready for dinner and a game of cards!

To see 120+ other tablescapes that I have created please click here. If you are on Facebook, join my Tablescape Ideas group! Just click on the Facebook Search box at the top of the page and type in Tablescape Ideas. Don’t miss my Tablescaping How-To section at the top of this blog post for more tablescaping tips and tricks.

Please check out the March 2022 issue of Country Sampler magazine for a photo of one of my Spring tablescapes.

I put a new tablescape on my blog every week so please check back!

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A California See Shells Tablescape

I live about a mile and a half from the Pacific Ocean so I often create tablescapes with an ocean theme. I love to walk along the sand collecting shells and sea glass although there is no sea glass here really. If you compare my recent tablescapes, you can see that this one recycles elements from my Bird tablescape and my Crab tablescape. It shows how you can create a variety of tablescapes using some of the same elements. If you want to be more creative when setting a table you could determine what colors you might use over and over depending on your decor and dishes and start gathering a few elements that you can mix and match. When I started tablescaping, I bought basic colors for chargers and dinner plates and the salad plates became the element that dictated the theme of the tables.

We are lucky to live so close to the sand and waves.

I have slowly purchased these shell plates on Ebay over the past few years. I still don’t have a complete set of dinner plates but I continue to watch for them. The tablecloth came from Amazon.

The salad and dinner plate are both Bordallo Pinheiro, and made in Portugal. There are many different shell plates available from many different makers.

It is easier to find a shell plate that is salad size, it is more difficult to find one that is dinner plate size. I actually have four of these plates that are charger size but I needed six for this table so I didn’t use them.

The chargers are the same ones that I used for the Crab tablescape. The blue one is Mikasa’s Color Spectrum in Royal Blue that I bought on Ebay, a few at a time. The second charger is my Antique Beaded charger that I bought from Williams-Sonoma a few years ago.

This stainless flatware is another one of my favorites. It is made by Reed & Barton and is called Colonial Williamsburg Gloucester Shell. Each piece has a different shell on the bottom.

I bought the napkin rings on Ebay, They have different shell designs. They are labeled Knobler Taiwan. The napkins and table runner came from Etsy. A seller on there has made napkins for me several times. I tell her what I am looking for and she finds the material and makes them for me. This wasn’t exactly what I was looking for but it is really better than my original idea.

These are the same glasses that I used for my Crab table and my Bird table. I seem to be stuck on blue at the moment! I bought the blue goblets on Ebay, you can still find them for sale there. They were made by Libbey in the 1970’s and the pattern is Tulip in Dusky Blue. This clear goblet is actually the pattern my mother chose for her wedding crystal in 1938. She couldn’t remember the name of the pattern or who made it and I searched for decades trying to identify it with no luck. Finally one day I was reading through old San Bernardino newspapers online doing some genealogical research looking for information about my grandparents and I stumbled on an article about a wedding shower for my mother that mentioned her gifts and the name of her crystal! This Rock Sharpe crystal goblet was made by Libbey and the pattern was Ridgeway. I was able to complete the set buying them a few at a time on Ebay.

The shell place card holders are Andrea by Sadek, can’t remember where I bought them.

I bought this large shell several years ago and it usually sits on a shelf in the family room. It needed something after I put it on the table so I bought flat blue marbles and filled it and then put a few shells in it.

This table makes me want to walk along the beach and look for shells today!

To see 190+ tablescapes that I have created please click here. If you are on Facebook, join my Tablescape Ideas group! Just click on the Facebook Search box at the top of the page and type in Tablescape Ideas. Don’t miss my Tablescaping How-To section at the top of this blog post for more tablescaping tips and tricks.

I put a new tablescape on my blog every week so please check back!

A Crabby Crab Tablescape

This crab table design started out as one design and then through serendipity and circumstance, it ended up as something different. Several years ago I bought three small crab bowls at a garage sale. I used them in a ocean tablescape a few years ago with other ocean elements. In Virginia this Christmas we were at an antique mall and I found six more of an almost similar design and one larger one on sale. I had been gathering red crab items for a future table for a while. The plan was a navy tablecloth with red crab bowls and red and white accents. But when I finally got out the crab bowls again and looked closely, they were not red, they were orange-red and nothing matched. I really wanted to use the bowls so we shifted gears and Hubby spray painted the things that were red, orange-red.

These small crab bowls really have a presence, I love the claws, and the tiny face. They are labeled Made in PV Czechoslovakia.

Going to serve some kind of crab dish, that’s for sure!

I looked all over for salad plates with an all over pattern of red crabs but every one had one crab or the crabs were silly looking. I was googling crab plates and these popped up from Pfaltzgraff. They were on major sale and are microwave and dishwasher safe. The orange-red border matches perfectly. So the red crabs suddenly became blue crabs and the overall design was tweaked a bit. This happens sometimes with my tables, I can’t find what I need so I substitute something else and change the design.

The next plate down is melamine and I bought them at Crate and Barrel a few years ago.

For design purposes I am actually using two chargers on this table. This one is Mikasa’s Color Spectrum in Royal Blue. I have a few different colors and I bought them on Ebay a few years ago. I used a Hunter Green one on my St. Pat’s table this year.

The second charger is my Antique Beaded one from Williams-Sonoma a few years ago. I used it on one of my Easter tables this year.

The navy place mats came from Pier 1 on sale a few years ago.

I bought the frosted white flatware on sale online at Wayfair a few years ago, it is made by Cambridge. It is 18/0 so the fork tines are a bit sharper than I would like but I really liked the frosted color. Wayfair has really good sales on flatware sometimes. I used this flatware in blue on one of my Easter tables this year.

I recycled these goblets from my Bird tablescape, the blue was just what I was looking for and I hadn’t packed them away yet. I bought the blue goblets on Ebay, you can still find them for sale there. They were made by Libbey in the 1970’s and the pattern is Tulip in Dusky Blue. They actually are a bit lighter blue gray than this photo shows. This clear goblet is actually the pattern my mother chose for her wedding crystal in 1938. She couldn’t remember the name of the pattern or who made it and I searched for decades trying to identify it with no luck. Finally one day I was reading through old San Bernardino newspapers online doing some genealogical research looking for information about my grandparents and I stumbled on an article about a wedding shower for my mother that mentioned her gifts and the name of her crystal! This Rock Sharpe crystal goblet was made by Libbey and the pattern was Ridgeway. I was able to complete the set buying them a few at a time on Ebay.

I looked all over for orange-red crab napkin rings with no luck. Found lots of metal and blue ones but nothing the right color. I had bought these small crabs on Amazon to use as table scatter but they were shiny red when they arrived. Hubby was going to spray paint them orange-red and my daughter was over and I was telling her about my bad luck finding napkin rings and she suggested that I turn these into napkin rings, genius! So Hubby bought plain wood rings and spray painted them all and glued the crab to the ring and viola, cheap napkin rings! Navy napkins came from HomeGoods I think, I used them in the bird tablescape too. I think I found the orange-red ones there too a few years ago, sheer luck that they match.

I love these crab place card holders, I found them at Pottery Barn this year and yes, they were red but Hubby spray painted them for me.

I was in the middle of transforming the table elements from navy and red to navy and orange-red and I went on Amazon looking for a plain tablecloth for another table I am planning and suddenly stumbled on this tablecloth. I couldn’t believe it, it was the perfect color combination. Sometimes my table designs are like that, I find something late in the game that pulls it all together.

I was planning to just use the large bowl as a centerpiece but I was looking online at Pier 1 and here was a large wire crab! Another bit of serendipity that changed the design. It was red but Hubby did his magic and it now matches everything else. I set the larger crab bowl on top of it and done!

My rule usually is plain tablecloth with busy dishes or busy tablecloth with plain dishes but this tablecloth creates such a different mood than a plain navy tablecloth would have and the scale works so I couldn’t resist the combination here.

Clearly someone needs to bring crab home for dinner!

To see 190+ tablescapes that I have created please click here. If you are on Facebook, join my Tablescape Ideas group! Just click on the Facebook Search box at the top of the page and type in Tablescape Ideas. Don’t miss my Tablescaping How-To section at the top of this blog post for more tablescaping tips and tricks.

I put a new tablescape on my blog every week so please check back!