Repairing broken ceramics with gold in the style of Kintsugi

1. Intro and what you need 2: Hello, I'm Paula. And for this video, I'm going to show you how to do a modern version of Kentucky using epoxy glue and gold Michael powder. Now Kentucky is a traditional Japanese art where we glue pieces of ceramic back together and then highlight the cracks using some gold color. Traditionally it's gold leaf. In this case, we're going to use the gold Micah powder to color the glue gold. The idea behind consumer key is that the cracks that we are repairing are actually a part of the history of the piece and therefore should be honored. Those imperfections that have happened as the pieces broken are actually an important part of the history and the identity of the piece of work. And so putting the gold on it celebrates that part of its history and that it's broken, but it still has value. I really loved this Kentucky idea and that ethos behind the work in that style of working. So this video is good for anybody to have a go at it. It's quite a simple beginners way of doing consumer key. So I will show you the equipment that I will be using so that you can get your own. And then I will show you exactly step-by-step how to consume a piece together. I have one of my pieces here that's broken that I'm going to repair. So I'm a ceramic artist. I've been making pieces and clay for over 20 years. And so I've kind of come into the idea of Kentucky as part of my ceramic artwork. I hope you enjoy the video and that you enjoy doing your Kentucky. Okay, So the kit you're going to need to do consume key in this way. A broken piece that you're going to repair. Some epoxy resin glue, doesn't matter what the make is, just needs to be one that sets fairly quickly. Some gold Micah powder. A little pot to make sure it's glue in. A tool to mix the glue as you go. But tool that's got a bit of a narrow point on the end is very handy for when we go in with the gold and want to do it on quite fine cracks. So a tool a bit like that would be very useful. Then the other thing that I have is a pot with some race dry rice, so uncooked in there and some socks that I've also filled with some rice. And we use these to support the pot as the glue is drying and setting for us so that we don't have to hold things together as the glue dries. And that is the kit that will be needed for doing this consumer key. 2. Getting started: Okay, to start the consumer key, what you need to do first is make sure that you know where the pieces need to go on your broken piece. So this front of this part is quite easy as I only have pieces to put in to repair it. I know they both go there. When I come to doing the legs on my octopus, I will have to make sure that I know which leg is going where before I put the glue on and attach, um, for those. But I'm going to start with these two front pieces. So the first thing we need to do is to mix our glue together. Don't want to put out too much of the glue because it dries so quickly. Um, you only need a little bit each time. I've got my tool for mixing. Once the glue is all mixed together, we're keeping it plain, clear glue at this stage, we won't put the goal Micah powder in until the last bit where we're doing the decoration. So at this stage it's just the plain glue. Once it's all mixed, we can use the mixing tool to carefully apply the glue. Being reasonably generous, we don't want too much to squish out the sides, but at the same time we do want it the surface well covered. How are you going to put that on the one side that we're going to stick to first. Then we put the pieces in place. Now I'm quite fortunate with this piece because gravity is helping me with holding this. But I have just realized I need to also do some glue down this crack. So I'm going to take that back off quickly. I'm pop a bit more glue in there. I'm there. If it's a tricky piece there or there's a bit of a gap. What you want to do is put glue on both sides of the pieces. So you put glue on the main part here and I would put it on the sides here that as well of this piece. And that would help fill in any gaps if there was pieces where you could still see-through. Now, as I said, gravity is working in my favor here, so that's standing pretty much in place on its own. It's got a slight tilt down, so I am going to pull in one of my sock supports and just make it as tall as I can. I'm profit there to stop that piece from moving out, you do need to be a bit careful that the SOC doesn't glue. If there's any glue squished out on the cracks. So you need to be careful of that. Once you've got that supported the glue. If you still got glue left, we can carry on and do the same for the next piece. 3. After its dried: Once your pieces had a little bit of time to dry off for the glue, we're going to take away our support's. There we go. If in this case gravity was in my favor. And as the piece was angled at that degree, this piece is stayed in place. If my piece had the leg still attached and it would have been sat at its normal ankle. I could use my pot of rice to then balance the piece in it. That gravity helped me and leave it like that for the glue to have dried. For these two. The rice might well come in handy for these legs. So my next step is to start putting the legs back on the back here. And I need to identify which one which goes with which place that has broken up. Now, where I was able to do the two pieces on this front part or may not be able to do more than one leg at a time. For this, I'm only going to mix the smallest amount of glue, but just see because the legs are holding weight off the porch. I'm gonna need to support the pot while the links dry. And I think my rice pot is going to work best for this one this time. So here I'm going to bring in we need to get it so that it is the right angle for the leg that we want to put on. One seems like a good start. I will do the one leg at a time. Now, my glue has dried off from the previous time I've used it, so I'm just going to mix back over the top. Now, I'm only doing the smallest area for this. So I need a very small amount of glue. Mix the two signs together again. And in this case, I think it's going to be easier to put the glue on the leg piece that I'm putting in. When I finished with the glue, I'm scraping off the excess from the Tool and just putting it across the top so that the tool doesn't dry into the tray and gets stuck. Let's put our foot in place. Now. We need to wait another five to 10 min for that one. Okay. So I've left that for a couple of minutes. It's not quite set and they have moved a little bit. So I'm just going to readjust as much as I can with where the glue is. There we go. If they don't line up completely for any of your Kentucky parts, that's fine. As long as you can still build the piece with that slight misalignment, then it's okay. It becomes a problem if you can't quite fit all the pieces together properly because something somewhere is out of line. But you will find you have to move things around and adjust as you go. That's perfectly normal. 4. Applying the gold colour: As you can see, there's a few more additional supports around like Kentucky. What I found was that the legs started moving as it was drying. So I've added more supports in. And I would say watch your pieces as they dry just to make sure they're not moving into completely the wrong position and give them extra support when you need to, you can use anything that you can find around you that will help support them. Move just subtly to make differences, to change where things are positioned and support it, um, and then be very careful when you're taking the supports back out and starting to move things around again. But we should, I'm hoping be dry enough that I can take my supports away and turn my bot over. Now we go. One of the legs is a bit high off the ground, but that's okay. That will work. So we're now going to start doing the gold. This is simply the glue with some of the gold Michael powder put in it. You don't want too much powder in here, otherwise, you'll change the texture of the glue and it will dry really quickly and powdery. So it'd be hard to put on place over the cracks. But we're again just going to work a little bit at a time with the glue. You we don't want too much. You a little bit more than we than I did before. Um, but don't put out as much glue as you go to need for the whole thing because it's going to drive far too quickly on you for that. And I'm going to mix the glue first so that I know that's all combined in going to start going hard. And then we're just going to add that's a bit too much like a powder. Just going to mix a small amount of that into my glue. We'll use the rest for the next the next bar. Okay. Now, depending on your cracks, you might find that the mixing tool, the flat something with a wide flat edge like this might be the best thing. But I tend to find that something with a point at the end is the best way to go. So I just take a bit of the gold glue. Then I'm just going to go over with the points for the crack. This can stand away from me. So it's a bit of a raised I'm gold line on the cracks. And if you've got any that haven't quite filled in with the glue as well. You can fill them in. At this point. You need to be quite quick to use up. The glue. Glue is now trying out a little bit too much so it's a bit sticky. I think I can probably get another little bit out of this. I'm going to need to mix up a little bit more. If you have any little tubes that have come off at the edges of your balls like this one on the edge of mine. You can just fill in those pieces with some other goals as well. Just to finish off. It's probably worth letting it dry off. And then going around and going back and checking any places that the gold has been to make sure that you've managed to fill them all in. You also need to make sure that you turn the pieces around and over so that you can make sure that you've got all of the cracks. There we go. I think that his this piece finished. Now it just needs to dry. So give it a good 24 h to dry out completely. If it still needs some support anywhere and make sure that you do have it in on support for anything that's necessary. But once it's all dried, your piece will be finished. 5. Project: I hope you've enjoyed watching those videos, showing you how to do consume Q step-by-step, it's your turn now. For the project, it's up to you to make your own keen to key piece. You can go to a local charity shop if you don't have your own piece already broken that you want to repair and just buy an old piece of ceramics that you can then break. But I would suggest you break it carefully and not into too many pieces. Otherwise, you're going to make you, can you do qui, quite tricky to do. The bigger the pieces, the easier it is, particularly for the first time. It also means you can do it in one session if it's bigger pieces. Whereas if you have lots of small pieces, you reach a point where you have to let the glue dry. And so you have to wait till the next day to carry on with making European spooky. So have a go. And it would be great to see your pieces. If you want to post the pieces, please post them in the project gallery for this class. And it will be lovely to see your projects.