Category: Upcycling

Recycled Wall Art

Mosaiced wall using old broken plates and tiles.

A couple of weeks ago, we did a blog on my friend Ginny’s garden swirl that she created out of cement rubble. This weekend, she repurposed some broken crockery into awesome wall art.

In a home full of people things tend to get broken—plates, cups and bowls especially. Because she’s an arty soul, she hoards stuff like that so it can be reused.

First she drew a picture on the wall with chalk. Chalk is great because you can rub it out and start again if you don’t like it.

Then she hauled out her stash of broken stuff.

Wearing gloves, she laid the big shards out carefully, figuring which pieces would work best. Crockery is awkward, because it has ridges underneath which can make some pieces difficult to stick on the wall.

She has tile cutters, but also uses easy-to-find tools. She puts the broken plate into a sturdy see-through plastic bag and taps it hard with a nice smooth rock. She taps and chips until she has the size she wants. (Yes, sometimes the shape of the flower changes because she taps too hard.)

She used two old broken floor tiles for the vase. Those she simply put in a bag and smacked them with the handle of a spade.

A word of caution people – these shards are sharp and you should work with care.

Ginny didn’t. She didn’t have plasters either, so she used toilet paper and masking tape. That works well enough too.

The wall was green. Reusing an old plastic margarine tub, she put in several spoons of white tile grout and then mixed two teaspoons of Powafix green cement oxide into the grout. Slowly, she added some Tile Magic tile bond (adhesive and grout additive – also makes it waterproof) and stirred it up well until it was a gloopy porridge texture. If you put too much liquid in, just add a bit more grout until you get the right consistency. Don’t make too much grout at a time because it dries out relatively quickly.

An old ice-cream stick works well for putting the grout onto the plate before you stick it onto the wall. Ginny had enormous fun sticking the broken shards onto the wall to make her picture.

See for yourself—a bare patch of wall turned into a work of art.

Monday the 22nd of April was Earth Day—up-cycling is fun people and every bit helps.

Sibo

Rubble Rousing

Use your imagination… things do not have to be as they are.

Gardening can be an expensive hobby, but does not have to be.

My friend, Ginny, has become an avid gardener.

When they first moved into their house the front yard was bare. Obviously, the people who had lived there previously had tried planting grass, but then a water shortage hit and it died. There were a nice variety of succulents along one wall, with various bits of droopy vegetation decorating the fence.

Ginny and her lovely husband jumped in and decided a raised bed would be the way to go. They made a round one and filled it with teensy spinach plants. The spinach flourished… but the birds devoured most of it before they could. Summer arrived and it shrivelled up and died despite being watered. They decided to wait a while before planting anything else.

Then my friend had a run-in with cancer and to keep herself occupied and turn her brain off, she attacked the front garden.  She sculpted, laid and dug, all by the seat of her pants. So sometimes things worked out and sometimes they didn’t. The garden shop lady nearly died laughing when she discovered that she’d laid garden paths with gravel but had no weed cloth underneath. She bought the cloth but discovered it was nasty to work with and did not, in fact, actually do the job. The weeds still appeared.

Fast forward eight months. Ginny had been ogling out some building rubble up the road from their house.

“I want some of that,” she declared.

Her not-so-lovely husband rolled his eyes. “No! You’ll have to find somebody else to help you steal rubble from the side of the road.”

So she enlisted her daughter’s help and they raided the pile. But there was a dude at the house who gave them the thumbs up, so it wasn’t actually stealing after all.

She laid out that rubble in the same raised circle bed that they’d originally planted the spinach in. Piled blocks on top of each other until it looked appealing. Then she mixed a sloppy bowl of dark brown Tile Magic grout and tile bond liquid and gave the whole structure a quick wash of colour. Luckily they also had lots of compost from all the leaves and garden refuse to fill it up with earth.

The end result… a fabulous swirl in the garden full of herbs and flowers.

Get creative folk!

Sibo