My First Kintsugi Project (Plus, An Amazing Weekend!)

On Friday, I shared that I was going to be away from Matt overnight for the first time in over a decade. If you missed that, you can read about it here. Well, the weekend was a success all around. Matt and my mom had a very uneventful time, which is a very good thing. And of course, my mom spent the whole time not only making sure that Matt was taken care of, but also cleaning and doing laundry for me. She’s such a blessing and an amazing help to me.

Having my mom here with Matt while I was gone really put my mind at ease and allowed me to have a wonderful time at the retreat. There were about 40 women in all, and I had such a good time getting to know new people, talking, laughing (so much laughing!), eating good food, and trying a new-to-me art.

The whole theme of the weekend was brokenness. We talked a lot about personal brokenness and how God can bring beauty out of our brokenness. So as a practical illustration of this concept, we all spent Friday evening doing a kintsugi project. We were all told to bring a piece of broken pottery (with all of the pieces) so that we could use those for our project.

Kintsugi is a Japanese art of repairing a broken piece of pottery (or glass) in a way that the goal is not to hide the break or imperfection, but rather to highlight and beautify the break or imperfection using gold. The idea is that the cracks and imperfections are part of the life of the object and should not be hidden, but should be seen and celebrated. If you’ve never seen kintsugi before, you can see all kinds of examples here.

I wish I had thought to take a picture of my little vase when it was in pieces, but it didn’t even cross my mind. But here’s my little vase after I put it back together.

It’s not perfect, but I guess that’s the point, right? The whole point is to turn the imperfection and brokenness into beauty. And I do love the gold! My little vase already had a gold accent around the top, and I wish I had gone over that with the epoxy/gold dust mixture so that it would match the other gold.

The other side broke into some smaller pieces, and for a while there, I thought I was never going to figure out how the went back together. 😀 But I persisted until I got all of the pieces back together.

On a very surface level, it was a very fun, relaxing project to do, especially with a group of women so that we could talk, share, and laugh along the way. On a deeper philosophical level, I love the whole idea of highlighting those imperfections and celebrating them as part of the “life” of the object. And on a spiritual level, I love how that idea can be applied to our lives, as we all have to deal with individual brokenness to some level. And personally, as a Christian, I love to think about how God can take my brokenness and mend my brokenness back together for His glory.

And because I want to be reminded of that on a regular basis, I made room for my little kintsugi vase on the shelves in our sitting room.

If you’ve never done kintsugi, I recommend it, especially as a group project like we did it. Or if you have a meaningful or sentimental piece of pottery that is broken, this is a beautiful way to put it back together to highlight the “life” of that piece, brokenness and imperfections and all.

So that is a little glimpse into my weekend, and my first time away from Matt overnight in over a decade. It was such a good weekend for me, and I’m so thankful that my mom was willing to stay with Matt so that I could go. It was just one night, but it was so refreshing, and I needed that. And now I’m ready to get back to work on my studio. I had a goal of getting it finished by the end of this month, and there are only nine days left in the month. Eeekkk!! I have no idea if I can get it done, but I’m certainly going to try!

Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 fixer upper that my husband, Matt, and I bought in 2013. Matt has M.S. and is unable to do physical work, so I do the majority of the work on the house by myself. You can learn more about me here.