A New Life for an Old Favorite

Welcome Creative Kristi Readers!  I'm so humbled to be mentioned on such a fabulous blog.  I'd love it if you'd leave a comment and tell me a bit about yourself.  I'm new to the blogging world and am itchin' to make some bloggie friends.  Shout out if you're a new blogger, too!

When Frank and I got married, my mom gave us her mother's china.   It's a dainty blue floral pattern, and it's delicate and lovely and a bit feminine.

I like to use it on occasion, and when I do, I try to be very careful with it.  But, a few months ago when I was moving some things around in our china cabinet, I dropped a small demitasse cup on the floor.

It broke into several pieces, and I was so disappointed!  My father-in-law offered to carefully glue it back together, but I knew it certainly wouldn't look the same, and may not hold liquid.  I saved the pieces in a plastic bag, and after thinking on it a while, I came up with an idea.  See, my mom adored this china.  It was what they used on special occasions throughout her childhood.  I knew I wanted to make something for her.

By using the broken pieces to make a frame, she could enjoy seeing the pretty delicate blue flowers daily, as they frame a cute photo.

I picked up a cheap frame at Michaels.  I think it cost about $4.

First I took the glass and backing out of the frame and laid out my broken china.  The cup had only broken into three or four big pieces, so I used pliers to break it into smaller chunks.

 I played around with the lay-out.  There were some features of the cup that I wanted to translate to the frame, and was careful to place certain pieces in a way that would highlight those features.  For instance, the cups had a few tiny flowers on the inside of the rim, so I placed a piece showing those flowers so it was concave (you'll see this in a pic farther down).   I also wanted the manufacturer's stamp to be visible.

The delicate rim of the cups are painted with a thin blue stripe, so I placed pieces of that rim along the outside of the frame when I could, so the stripe would be visible.  I also wanted to keep the handle in tact. 

I moved the pieces around until I was happy with the layout, then I glued them down.

The Weld-Bond worked great.  I picked it up at Michaels, too.  I had used the superglue to piece the manufacturer's stamp piece back together when it broke into too many pieces.  I wanted it to be as seamless as possible, so the stamp would be legible.

The glue had to set for 24 hours, so the next night I picked up where I had left off.   We had some grout on-hand for tiling on the porch addition, so I mixed up a little batch.  

 It was the consistency of loose clay, I'd say.  It's important to remember, I was just wingin' all of this.  There could very well be a better way to get this project done, but this worked for me!

I smushed the ground into all of the crevices and let it sit for about 20 minutes.

 

 Then I went in with a damp cloth and carefully wiped away the grout that was covering pieces.  This took a bit of trial and error.  From what I understand, if you were to be grouting square tiles, you could swipe the damp cloth at a 45 degree angle to the grout lines to easily wipe away the excess.  Because these pieces were all different shapes, sizes, angles and heights, I had to be a bit more careful.  

This shot gives you a glimpse of that concave piece and the first layer of uneven grout.

After I'd wiped a good bit away, I let it sit for another 24 hours.  The next night I came back and repeated the grouting process, hoping I'd be able to even the grout out a bit.  This is what it looked like just after I thickly applied the grout.

 After 20-30 minutes, once the grout had set a little, I came back in, this time with q-tips, to remove excess.  I would dip the q-tip in water, and this allowed me to be very careful in where and how much grout was removed. It's important to keep your q-tip or cloth damp, pretty wet, really. 

The grout dried a lighter color, and ended up looking like this.

I could have sealed it, but since it won't get wet or suffer any wear and tear, I just left it.

Of course I printed a picture of our favorite little one and assembled the frame.  Here's how it turned out:

Mom really seemed to love the gift.  When she opened it, I don't think she realized that the frame was anything special (that cute pic had her attention).  But, after a moment she recognized that familiar blue flower.  It's bittersweet to lose a precious piece of family china, but I'm so happy to have given it new life. 

Another fun project would be to simply glue and grout the pieces onto a square or rectangle backing, and frame it without glass.  Or, you could make coasters or a trivet.  Lots of possibilities.

Have you guys up-cycled a broken treasure?   I'd love to hear about it!

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