I was cleaning out my craft cupboard the other day. Well trying to any way, and came across some bits of pottery that I’d been saving up for a mosaic project. I  have no idea what happened. Some of the pieces had cracked (I probably didn’t bake them long enough) and others had broken. One little piece even had some glue all over it  🙁 I had to find a way to either give them a new lease of life or chuck them.

Bits of broken pottery

I’m a  bit of a hoarder so the thought of throwing them away only lasted about a millisecond 8)  A few of the bits looked like they could make an interesting something. So I grabbed some felt, wire, glue and a pallet block from the craft cupboard and abandoned my clean up effort. Does that happen to you too?

It seems my head is always floating around in some creative nebulous where the clean up fairies don't live.Click to Tweet

A pallet block, pottery bits, felt and wire

Okay time to do something about those broken bits.

How to Turn Broken Bits Into Art

I traced the outline of the pottery bits onto the felt and cut out the shapes. They needed to be trimmed slightly to make them a bit smaller than the piece of pottery. Using Gorilla glue I stuck a wire and the felt shape on to the back of each of the pottery bits.

Position the wire and stick down the felt

Once the glue had dried, I played around, moving the wired pottery bits until they looked right. I used the basic design principle of odd numbers to try create a more dynamic layout and add visual interest. Often the easiest but most powerful layouts use one strong visual combined with the same alignment and consistent use of color. I decided to make the larger broken face the focal point, and then balance the whole layout with the cracked hearts and smaller faces. When I was happy I cut the wire shorter and hubby sanded the pallet block for me and gave it a coat of clear wax to seal.

Plan the layout and sand the pallet block

We drilled 5 small holes in the pallet block and pushed the wired pottery bits into the holes. I had to trim the wires a bit and moves things around until everything looked a bit more balanced. The raw pallet block fits the general color scheme and adds a bit of rough simplicity to the statue thing. Once we had the right look I took the wired bits out, put a small drop of glue on the bottom of the wire and pushed them into their holes again. I’m quite happy with how it turned out. The Floating Heads statue makes a really nice statement in our lounge.

Broken bits of pottery become a Floating Head Statue

I would love to know what you think? Have you made a work of art using broken bits?

P.S. I’ve come to the conclusion that craft cupboards are dangerous. There are just so many interesting bits in there waiting to be re-purposed and there’s never enough time to do it.