Next time you break a cup or saucer, consider how you might use the other half - the still intact piece. Sometimes it seems a shame to trash something that's not broken.
Stay tuned this month for craf-tea Fridays - where we'll discover great ways to recycle teaware pieces and transform them into lovely, kitschy works of art, or at least give you a few ideas on how to give those pieces a new lease on life!
1. Find the china you want to use. Your broken and cracked teacups and saucers are a start. You may need to add more – watch for them at garage sales, thrift shops and antique stores.
2. Hammer away, break the cups into small pieces. Place the tea cup in a plastic bag, wrap it in a towel and use a rubber mallet to break the cup up. A set of cutting pliers can be used to trim away white bits surrounding the images. Be sure to protect your eyes!
3. Collect the patterned parts to the side, and keep the rest in the bag.
4. Mix the tile adhesive. One designed for bathrooms that looks like cement will work nicely. Mix it a bit thicker than it says on the package.
5. Evenly spackle the tile adhesive onto your pot, working your way around.
6. Add the china mosaic!Start with the patterned pieces and make a “front”. Use the plain pieces for the “backside”. If you use the thicker pieces from the saucer, the texture of the pot may be uneven, but you may like it like that! If you want a more flat surface you should sort out the thick pieces first.
7. Mix the grout, a white powder (or coloured) with water before using it. Then add it to the surface, smearing it on top of everything. Ensure the spaces between the tiles are filled.
9. Clean it! After this has dried for a while (5 minutes) go around the whole pot with a wet cloth and clean up the mosaic pieces from the grout. You have to do this again in 30 minutes with a damp cloth, so the tiles shine. Then let it dry properly.
