How to Make a Broken Dish Pendant

 

This tutorial was originally posted on Crafting a Green World.

Pro tip: If you pretend that your dinnerware aesthetic is mismatched Fiestaware, then it doesn't matter how many dishes your kids break, because you can always just go buy another random plate and it'll fit right in. And bonus points for style, because broken Fiestaware is awesome for crafting!

Of course, you can use all kinds of broken dishes for crafting, but I am particularly fond of this colorful and cute broken dish pendant that I recently made from my dearly departed yellow Fiestaware plate. It's easier than you think to cut ceramics with a couple of standard tools, and there are loads of ways to finish off the pendant to your taste. This broken dish pendant is a fun upcycling project, and you get to use power tools--what could be better?

Tools & Supplies

To make your own broken dish pendant you will need:

Broken Dish

The local thrift store is my favorite place to buy crafting supplies, and I have no qualms about shattering even the cutest thrifted plate just to make mosaic tesserae or broken dish pendants. I'm equally fond of upcycling my own broken possessions, which is why I have that sad little stack of broken Fiestaware!

Dremel with Diamond Bit Cutting Wheel

 

Obviously, you can substitute whatever variable-speed rotary tool you prefer, but my good old Dremel 3000 has been doing right by me for at least a decade now, so I don't have experience with any other brands.

Grinder or Sandpaper (optional)

You do want to grind or sand away any sharp edges or snags, but you can leave the just plain irregular or uneven bits alone if you're not feeling picky.

Jewelry Findings

There's a lot of scope for imagination here! You'll see me finishing my pendant with soldered edges and a double barrel swivel, but you can use any findings and method you prefer, or even just use a tile bit to drill a hole right through your piece for hanging.

1. Cut the pendant shape from your dish

The secret to this project is just how stinking easy it is to cut ceramics with the correct tools. Here, I'm using an old-school Dremel 3000 and a diamond cutting wheel. That's really all you need!  Notice that I'm doing this cutting in my sink, shamefully getting water droplets all over my Dremel. That's because the most important piece to this puzzle is keeping your work surface wet: it reduces friction and lowers the temperature (caused by friction), so your piece is less likely to crack and your cutting wheel will last longer.

2. Sand or Grind the Edges of Your Pendant (optional)

I definitely could have cut this circle more neatly (if you're worried about making wonky cuts, choose a super simple shape, like a triangle, for your first few pendants. Save the wonky-looking circles for experts like me!), but the soldered edges that I'm planning on will cover a lot of flaws. All I did, then, was switch out my Dremel's cutting wheel for a grinding bit to grind down one jagged bit and round the pendant's edges. Rounding the edges ALWAYS makes a cut piece look more professional!

3. Rig the Pendant for Hanging

You have SO many options for actually turning your broken dish into a pendant!

• Use epoxy glue to adhere a bail directly to the back of the pendant.
• Use a diamond drill bit to drill a hole through the top of the pendant.
• Wrap the pendant in wire, and twist to make a loop for hanging.
• Solder around the pendant, then solder on a jump ring.

For a piece any bigger than this particular pendant, I like the look of drilling a hole directly through the dish, but this little Fiestaware logo pendant is only 1" in diameter! Did any of y'all also learn how to solder during the soldered microscope slide jewelry craze? If so, you'll know that I burnished copper foil tape onto the pendant's edges, brushed them with flux, then soldered them with lead-free silver solder. A larger dollop of solder on top allows you to fix the hanger. 

 There are SO MANY fun things to do with broken dish pendants like these. You can turn them into necklaces or charm bracelets, add them to suncatchers or windchimes, or embellish pull chains or garlands. Supersize your broken dish pendants and use them as Christmas ornaments or gift tags, or decoupage or paint on top of them to make signage or wall art. Let me know what you're going to turn YOUR broken dish pendant into in the comments below!

I Taught My Kid to Solder

Even though learning how to solder (from an expert--shh!) is one of the activity possibilities in the Girl Scout Junior Jeweler badge, I was nevertheless a little leery when Will showed it to me and asked to learn to solder.

But who am I to refuse a child's desire to use a power tool and play with molten metal?

I actually do know how to solder, although not terribly well. Back in the day, I made many postage stamp pendants--are postage stamp pendants still a thing?

Mental note: check to see if postage stamp pendants are still a thing.

Fortunately, while the kid and I were digging through the garage looking for the soldering iron, copper tape, flux, solder, and jewelry clamps that you need to solder, I also found a set of Christmas ornaments that I had made and taped but never gotten around to actually soldering.

They're pages cut out of a Christmas songbook, sandwiched between glass, already taped. They are PERFECT to learn how to solder on!

I set the kid up, gave her a demonstration, showed her how the solder would only stick to the copper tape and only when it had been fluxed, showed her how to wipe her soldering iron off on a damp sponge, made sure her hair was tied back, reminded her to sit well forward so that I didn't have to take her to the ER to treat third-degree molten silver burns on her thighs, and then... let her go.

Um, this kid is a NATURAL at soldering:

The only time that she needed my help at all was when she added the hanger to the ornament: I held the wire to the top of the ornament so that Will could still hold both the solder and the soldering iron.

Here is Will's finished ornament:

Isn't it beautiful? I've got four others, all taped and ready, so perhaps she'll have done the whole set by Christmas!

Actually, however, as soon as she was done with this one, she asked about creating her own design next.

A postage stamp pendant, then, perhaps?

P.S. I used this book back when I was learning to solder, and I still have it. Ooh--I should show it to Will!

Sunday Update

I think I post often about the entity that is Sunday in our house. Saturdays, now--Saturdays are fine. We cooked, the girls and I invented a board game (more on that later), we hung out at the Wonderlab, did a little shopping (little-girl mittens at the west-side Goodwill), had dinner, and enjoyed Family Movie Night (Mary Poppins--Matt does an AWESOME Dick Van Dyke doing a cockney accent). But Sunday? Here we go...

The Nutcracker

As part of my attempt to make Willow into Someone to Go to the Theater with (This is the same kind of emotion, I think, that some moms feel when they talk about how they wanted to have a little girl in order to have Someone to Go Shopping with), I practically put a second mortgage on the house in order to buy the two of us AWESOME seats at the IU Ballet Theater's The Nutcracker in December. Because nothing is fun unless you study for it, not only have I checked out several versions of the ballet in book and DVD form from the library, including one ON ICE, and some Tchaikovsky CDs, but today while I soldered (see below), Matt took the girls to a public library program on The Nutcracker. The girls were thrilled by the dancing----although not quite as much by the craft activity: A crown, I think?

Soldered Glass Ornaments

Soldering doesn't really fit with my work ethic, since I can't manipulate molten metal with two little kids underfoot, but I obsessed about learning it at one point when I had lost my mind studying for my qualifying exams, and I still find it a lovely craft. Here are some ornaments I soldered while the rest of the family was at the library:
I've now used up the last of my pre-cut glass stash, though, and I find cutting glass with a hand tool VERY tricky. I believe I'm in the market for a second-hand glass grinder.

Officially a Big Girl

I had to be a bit insistent with Matt about this, but once we switched to a panties-only during waking hours policy, Syd seems to have finished her own personal switch to a toilet-only during waking hours policy.

In our house, toilet-learning is the first time that a kid warrants her own big gift, just for her. Will got a tricycle; I think Syd would like a whole lot more something like this

from Ostheimer Wooden Toys, but it costs Four. Hundred. DOLLARS!!! I'll be looking this week for something similar that I won't, you know, have to trade Sydney for.

For Hanging by the Chimney with Care

I think it's a total rip that stockings are for kids, so in our house we also do stockings for everyone, and so Matt helped me design a pattern (he drew, I nitpicked) for some stockings to sew out of felted wool. Here are three blocked and drying:

You can't tell in the photo, but the grey ones are really beautiful--they're from a cable-knit sweater, lightly felted, with the tops the finished bottom of the sweater. One will be Syd's and one I'll put in my etsy shop; the striped one is Matt's.

The Battle over the Table

The living room table, so recently moved (by me, with the back injury) to the lovely spot with the natural light by the window, was briefly shoved into a corner (by me, with the back injury) because Matt was being a dick about it, but my ability to throw a really big hissy fit (it's the redneck in me) with little to no warning fortunately trumped Matt's shove-everything-against-the-wall design ethic, and the table was moved back (by me, with the back injury) into the sweet spot a couple of hours later.

Parts of the House are Clean

Parts of the House are Still Very, Very Filthy

Can you even find the baby--excuse me, big girl--in the photo?

Panties are Prepared

I drew a pattern for the perfect pair of T-shirt panties today, only, T-shirt material isn't as stretchy as regular panty material, and you may not realize this when you put your panties on every day, but your panties stretch a LOT to accomodate your body, and all this is a preface to the fact that I need to tell you that the panties I make for myself out of T-shirts are ENORMOUS. Seriously, they're huge. Looking at them, they make you kinda feel like crying, but ooh, they are comfy.

So I cut out a ton for myself, and they are ENORMOUS, and Willow wanted some, too, and she wanted them to be "matches" with Momma, so Matt used his graphic design skills to cut down my pattern to fit her. The style is a little more adult than I'd choose for her--a little hipster, slightly cheeky--but seriously, something about the idea of wearing matching panties with my four-year-old...I could not resist. Here's the stack of Will's all cut out:

So yeah, our Sundays tend to be ridiculous. I'm exhausted, but you know what? Matt cleaned out the refrigerator today, and we totally have an unopened bottle of cheap champagne back in there.

I'm gonna go get it.

Everyone Can Love Dinosaurs Now

It took forever, but the Girls Love Dinosaurs section is finally up and polished on my etsy shop. Some highlights:



Go check it out!

Girls Love Dinosaurs

As a sort of last-minute idea, I've decided to sell at a local craft fair on March 29. It's supposed to be a showcase of female artists and businesswomen, and my booth rental fee benefits, in part, a local support system serving women and children who are the victims of violence.

I'd almost decided against selling at local, smaller markets, partly because I think my work is pretty weird and not to the general taste, partly based on a very silly couple of tiny craft fairs I did around Christmastime, including one for Girls Inc. at which it turned out I was the only vendor (I still pulled a profit, but being the only vendor...just embarrassing), and partly based on this book I've been reading, Crafts and Craft Shows: How to Make Money, by Philip Kadubec. 

Kadubec isn't really my scene, since he describes his work as "country traditional," highlights booths that look like little general stores or post picket fences at their entrances, and might possibly think that the Internet is a fad, but he was a very successful crafter before retirement and is very insightful about the business of crafts. He prefers larger shows that are precisely targeted toward your particular craft, even though they have scary-large booth rental fees, over teeny-tiny little local fairs that are really cheap to enter. Teeny-tiny little local fairs, he argues, can also be pretty ticky-tacky, don't necessarily attract anyone who wants or can buy your stuff, and waste time better spent more professionally marketing your business or even just making stuff.

I think Kadubec is right on track with this, based on my small experience, and he's voiced the reasoning that will allow me to no longer waste my time at, say, the Christmas craft fair at Matt's office. I think this Luna Arts Festival is going to be awesome, though. From what I gather, it's an established fair with a history, which is a pro for selling at it. It's a craft fair/expo with nothing else distracting, like a chili cook-off or auction or something, tacked on, but with local musicians playing and drawing in their fan bases. It's woman-centered, which I'm always on board with, and I can use it as a dry-run for building a booth that actually looks really professional, before jumping into applying to any big shows.

That being said, I'm still not going to show my regular Pumpkin+Bear stuff. Kadubec also speaks about the possibility of saturating your local market, especially if you don't sell stuff you can use up, like soap, but stuff that sits around and stays stuff for the rest of your life, like record bowls and T-shirt quilts. So I think it is important that if I sell a lot locally, I do provide some significant variety in my work. And therefore, I've decided that for this fair, Pumpkin+Bear will be selling under the alias Girls Love Dinosaurs.

My concept is stuff, primarily recycled but not necessarily, that is thematically centered on dinosaurs--primarily for kids but not necessarily. I worked hard the whole weekend, took the kid out for a photo shoot this morning before it started snowing (something else Kadubec suggests--awesome photos of your stuff or your creation process displayed in your booth or in an album in your booth. It humanizes your creation and highlights its uniqueness and the handicraft aspect), and here's what I've got so far (I can't fix the dismal winter lighting on any of the photos, because my 8-year-old bootleg copy of Photoshop 6.0 finally crapped out on me, and my legitimate purchase of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is currently still winging its way to my door):

These are the Fatty Stegasauruses, made from recycled wool sweaters and polyester batting (I like the fact that I can upgrade the stuffing to make them really eco-friendly, and they're a possibility for selling in a local store or two here). If I have time to make another batch before the fair, I might make a different size or type...say, apatasaurus?

These are the dinosaur-themed "summer quilts," meaning they don't have any batting, per se, just either a fleece back and binding or a fleece middle and a flannel back and binding. I still machine-quilted them, though, which is awesome fun. I'm thinking three sizes--a "play" size, for doll blankets or what-have you, a "baby," size, which is a crib quilt, and a "kid" size, which is a twin.

And these are my soldered glass pendants, made from dinosaur stamps that I bought from Western Mountain Stamp and Coin, which sells packages of stamps sorted by theme--I also have the cats-themed one and the space-themed one, and I really want the maps one and the elephants one, too, only I'm already swimming in stamps. I'm particularly pleased with my soldering work since I bought grozing pliers that permit me to smash the little uneven bits off the edges of the glass that I can hardly ever cut evenly, and the joy of this has given me good-enough glass-cutting karma to actual make some pretty accurate cuts now, as well.

So I'm thinking this might be a sweet product line, because people tend to like dinosaurs. My kids are obsessed with them, as are a lot of kids, and they're also quirky enough to perhaps draw in the quirky crowd. If they're the next stuffed chicken or not, I don't know.

Remaking Vintage Jewelry

I solder myself and the girls a lot of butch jewelry out of microscope glass and postage stamps, but I haven't yet gotten into beadwork. I read how-to books and arts and crafts books regardless of whether or not I practice that particular craft, however, and so I was pleasantly surprised to find, while reading by Lindsay Cain, a short how-to on remaking vintage jewelry. The most I've ever done with this was to replace a set of my Mama's handpainted yellow beads that Papa bought her in Italy during the war with fishing line instead of rotting thread, but the possibilities here seem pretty sweet. I've seen a lot of recycled jewelry on etsy, for instance, that uses other objects--pop tabs, dominoes, paperclips, keys, etc.--to make beautiful jewelry, but I think it's the same ethic as remaking clothing to take tacky jewelry and make it awesome.

Buzz Buzz Designs is one Web shop that does exactly this--the artist's work seems to be specifically informed by the recycling ethic, and utilizes vintage costume jewelry to make fine new things. I'm especially fond of this vintage Lucite sphere on a vintage aluminum chain.

I also like pequitobun's shop on etsy: this artist's stuff is partially vintage and can be pretty punk rock.

Femmegems itself also offers this really cool jewelry makeover service: you can ship your own vintage jewelry to them and they'll remake it for you into something awesome. Awesome.

A Few Good Books

The girls and I go to the Monroe County Public Library at least twice a week. On Tuesdays there is storytime with the guy who juggles and has puppets, on Thursdays there is Spanish language playgroup with Miss Nancy, who can play the guitar and breastfeed baby Mateo at the same time, and there are always thirty or so books and a computer game and a DVD to check out. Some of my favorite things to get are books and magazines about making stuff. Not much is specifically geared to what I like to make, although some is, but nearly everything has something to appreciate, however chintzy. Here are some of my favorites:

, by Melanie Graham, is a little-known book on remaking clothes for children. Graham has you take all your kids' measurements and then apply some of them to these templates she has in the back--armpit, sleeve, crotch and hips--basically all the curves. So, you stick the curve templates the right distance apart based on what you measured, and there you go, couture kids' clothes. Even better than that, though, is that she shows you how to get the kids clothes from adult clothes--you know, set the pattern out just like this to get jumpers or overalls from pants, set it out like this to get shirts or dresses or rompers from shirts, set it out like this to get pants from sleeves. Some of her styles are pretty outdated, but I like her techniques. It took two tries to get the templates right, and then I went and lost Willow's, and I've only set two sets of sleeves correctly, but my jumpers and dresses and pants work, and I think it's just really smart.

by Lisa Bluhm is what finally taught me how to solder, that and the hot pink soldering iron I also bought from Simply Swank. Mind you, I was suffering from psychosis brought on by studying for qualifying exams, and the resulting lack of sleep and surplus of caffeine, but I managed to break more than one soldering gun, including one that my Papa had given me that he'd probably had, successfully, for 30 years, before I finally broke down and just bought quality equipment. Imagine! Anyway, Bluhm has well-explained instructions and clear illustrations, a welcome change after trying to figure out how to do everything by reading Craftster forums. I wish she'd break down and give some actual product suggestions, because I still need to buy a decent glass cutter, and I probably won't ever do any of her actual projects she includes, but the techniques alone are well worth it, as is my "Solder Your Art Out!" inscription.

by Kathy Cano-Murillo is notable for reassuring me that my taste for the gaudy in decorating is not demented, but ethnic.

by Hannah Rogge and Adrian Buckmaster and T-Shirt Makeovers: 20 Transformations for Fabulous Fashionsby Sistahs of Harlem are inspiring in that I might even, sometime soon, or, well, sometime, cut down my whole huge stash of men's T-shirts into something vaguely feminine and flattering.

I have a million more books I love. Know more? Share!

What I made today: stuffed panther cut out from the image on a T-shirt depicting the local high school's mascot