Poisoned apples and the Japanese art of Kintsugi.

A few months ago, I went to a thrift store. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, which is really the best kind of thrift store trip. Just a quick browse to see if there was anything good. And while I didn’t find the squirrel nutkin than I’m sort of perpetually keeping an eye out for, I did stumble across a really neat bowl. Perfect for fruit, I thought! It will look so nice against our new dining room table!

And it really did. Bright green outside, bright white within. Looked amazing full of apples, even when half of them had bites out of them because children.

You can probably already tell where this story is headed. And you’re right, because during a particularly spirited retelling of Snow White, my nice new fruit bowl full of poison apples got knocked to the floor by a swish of the wicked queen’s cape. Crash.

Well, that was nice while it lasted, but now I’ve got a pile of shards.

But then I remembered seeing something online about a Japanese technique called Kintsugi, where they’d repair broken pottery with gold, thereby highlighting the break rather than trying to hide it. And I thought to myself, this is an excellent way to get back into blogging, isn’t it. Cause it’s like me, I broke real good this year. Piece by piece I’ve glued myself back together, and I’m all the better for it. (Of course, my repair included more therapy and pharmaceuticals and less glue and gold dust, but the metaphor holds.)

So I off I went to the dollar store for 5-minute epoxy, and off to amazon to order gold mica powder. And then yes, the broken pieces of the bowl sat on the counter for a length of time while I did other things. But finally this afternoon I had the baby sleeping, I had a fresh cup of coffee, and I had time to clear off our craft table. It was time.

(Of course, once I clear an area to a lovely and inviting space, it was immediately swarmed by children who were all “OH HELL YEAH CRAFTS LOOK AT ALL THIS ROOM FOR ACTIVITIES”, but I managed to hold on to a corner of the table for myself, and I set in to repair my bowl. And then the baby woke up, but he was placated with attention from Nate long enough for me to do my project so THIS IS STILL HAPPENING)

First I laid out all my supplies and read the directions about 17 times to make sure I understood what to do. Then I immediately did the first joint wrong. But it was ok. I wisely started on the bottom so it’s not really visible.

Working quickly, I squeezed out a little glue/epoxy onto the soup can lid, mixed in a pinch of gold powder, and then spread it onto ONE side of each joint. (Just one side, Grimes, try following a direction once in a while). I let the glue dry a few minutes, then while it was still tacky I took a dry paintbrush and dusted a little gold dust onto each seam.

Some sections turned out better than others, but overall I’m quite happy with the results.

And just think how good I’ll be at this technique by the time those kids break my newest favorite mug. ↓