I had a small bud vase that a friend gave me years ago that fell off the shelf. Our mischievous cat knocked it over in the middle of the night and I was so sad to find it broken.
The vase was special to me so instead of throwing it away I thought I would try the traditional art of kintsugi. Kintsugi is a Japanese method of repairing broken or cracked ceramics with gold dust mixed with lacquer or epoxy. It’s the practice of emphasizing scars instead of hiding them. I thought I’d try to fix my little broken vase and now it’s perfectly imperfect in its repaired state.
Traditional kintsugi use real powdered gold, but in my case I made a fake version using powdered gold pigment and epoxy glue mixed together. You can buy DIY kits online using the same combination (see this kit and this kit). I simply bought a small container of gold pigment powder from Michaels and epoxy glue and then mixed them together to create a gold glue to put the broken pieces back together.
The supplies you need to do the same are pictured below: gold pigment powder, epoxy glue, small plastic mixing bowl, small tip brushes, mixing stick and latex gloves.
The process is not complicated, it just takes a little patience. I painted on the gold epoxy with a small brush and attached to no more than three pieces at a time so they could dry in larger sections which required me to mix the gold pigment dust and epoxy in small amounts four separate times. I waited a full hour between sessions for the epoxy to fully cure before moving on to joining the additional segments together.
I’m posting the Reel on Instagram so you can see the process in the video as I didn’t take any photos in progress. I’m so happy with how it turned out, I actually like the bud vase even more now. 🙂
Kintsugi is proof that even broken things can be made more beautiful. 🙂