For my up-cycle project I wanted to find a way to repurpose one of my favorite mugs I recently broke. I did some research, and found a bunch of projects where broken porcelain was repurposed into jewelry. Shown in the images below.
For my own design I chose some pieces of the cup that were about the right size and shape and drew up what I wanted the final product to look like in the image shown below. To create the holes I wanted to use a hand drill, and sand paper to smooth out the edges and get the shape that I desire.
Unfortunately, when I attempted my first hole, the porcelain shattered even with a health helping of lubrication. My two ideas moving forward are to either coat the porcelain in epoxy before drilling, or to drill underwater.
On a final note I plan to use debarred fishhooks for the earrings and a regular chain for the necklace.
Credit https://louhortonsculpture.com https://www.pinterest.com/pin/276197389620839191
3 Comments. Leave new
The use of ceramic is a very cool idea. might be a hard material to work with though since it is very brittle.
Morgan, Using broken items to create something new is a really creative idea. I didn’t know you could reshape things as brittle as porcelain into other types of jewelry, as you mentioned above it is very hard to work with. Have you looked at other methods on how to put a hole through porcelain? As porcelain is usually heat treated at the factory which makes it very brittle, so it would be very difficult to drill through.
Morgan,
I think this is an awesome idea. I’ve never heard of jewelry made from old mugs, but they look really nice and its a cool way to reuse material. Also its nice because the porcelain is generally already patterned for you and if you are a big coffee/tea drinker it has some sentimental value to you. So are you looking to make a matching necklace and earrings? Have you put any thought into what shapes you want to make the porcelain shards into or do you want to keep them sort of rough so they really look like shards of broken mug? I think either could create a very interesting aesthetic.