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On Friday, I shared that I was going to be away from Matt overnight for the first time in a decade. If you missed it, you can read about it here. Well, the whole weekend was a success. Matt and my mom had such an uneventful time together, which was a very good thing. Of course, my mom not only took care of Matt, but spent the entire time cleaning and doing laundry for me. She is a blessing and a wonderful 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 40 women in total, and I had a great time meeting new people, talking, laughing (laughing a lot!), eating good food, and trying new art for me.
The whole theme of the weekend was broken. 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 the pieces) so we could use them for our project.
Kintsugi is a Japanese art of repairing a broken piece of pottery (or glass), the goal is not to hide the break or imperfection, but to highlight and beautify the break or imperfection using gold. The idea is that cracks and flaws are part of the life of an object, not to be hidden, but to be seen and celebrated. If you’ve never seen Kintsugi before, You can see all kinds of examples here,
So I took a small rose vase that had been in my stash of decorative supplies for a while and I wrapped it in a towel and smashed it into several pieces with a hammer. And I tried to put it back together using Kintsugi. You can buy Kintsugi repair kits online. Amazon has a lot of them, and It’s the only one I’ve used (affiliate link).
I thought I would take a picture of my little vase when it was in pieces. Unfortunately, that’s not even in my mind. But here is 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 make imperfection and brokenness beautiful. And I love gold! My little vase already has a gold accent on the top and I want it to match the other gold if I mix it with an epoxy/gold dust mixture.
The other side broke into a few small pieces, and for a while there, I thought I’d never figure out how to put it back together. 😀 But I persisted until I got all the pieces back.
On a very superficial level, this is a very fun, relaxing project, especially with a group of women where we can talk, share and laugh. On a deeper philosophical level, I like the whole idea of ​​highlighting those flaws and celebrating them as part of the “life” of the object, rather than trying to cover them up and hide them. And on a spiritual level, I love how that idea can be applied to our lives, because we all deal with personal brokenness to some degree. And personally, as a Christian, I love to think about how God can take my brokenness and fix it back up for His glory.
And because I want to be reminded of it daily, I’ve made room for my little Kintsugi vase on the top shelf in our sitting room.
If you’ve never done kintsugi, I recommend it, especially as a group project like we did. Or if you have a meaningful or sentimental piece of broken pottery, this is a beautiful way to put it back together to highlight the “life” of the piece, brokenness and imperfection and all.
So that’s a little glimpse into my weekend, and the first time I’ve been away from the mat overnight in over a decade. It was a great weekend for me, and I’m so thankful that my mom was willing to stay with Matt Matt so I could go. It was just one night, but it was so refreshing and I needed it. Now I’m ready to work in my studio. I am aiming to finish by the end of this month and there are only nine days left in the month. Eeeek!! I don’t know if I’ll be able to finish it, but I’ll definitely try!
Addicted 2 Decorating shares my DIY and decorating journey as I renovate and decorate the 1948 Fixer Upper that my husband, Matt, and I purchased in 2013. Matt has MS and is unable to do physical activity, so I do most of the housework myself. You can learn more about me here.
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