Give that Old Terra Cotta Pot a Facelift

I talk a lot about saving garbage from our land fills around here. "Our land fills?", I hear you ask. Damn tootin', they are ours! Bought and paid for with the construction waste left over from building our homes, with our outdated appliances and computer hardware, our junkmail and packaging waste and left-over food... We own those land fills, you and I.

It's rough sometimes, all this recycling. I'd be lying if I said that there weren't times that I feel defeated when I look at the piles and stacks of separated recyclables scattered all over this place. When I see the compost piles that have to be worked and turned, and think of the driving I have to do to take the stuff to the centers that will take it. And even with all my efforts, I still end up making a trip to the local land fill every month.

There is one kind of pile I have around here that never leaves me feeling defeated, though. That's my cans and buckets and even piles of "junk" that I'm saving to create with. I think using trash to make treasure is an environmental double whammy. When we do this not only are we saving some space in our land fills, we are also choosing to create rather than consume. How cool is that?!

A couple weeks ago I wrote Small Rescues Make Big Changes, and covered some great uses for discarded and rescued tile along with a list of fantastic junk to use in mosaics. Today I thought I'd give you a step by step how-to on a small project to get you started. This is a great way to give a facelift to a worn out old terra cotta planter!

Old terra cotta pots like this get looking pretty funky. Minerals in the soil and water can stain and even erode them a bit leaving them looking well... old and funky! Learning to cut tile isn't hard, but until I figure out how to cut tile and take a photo at the same time (I may just have to break down and get a tripod out!)I'll leave that to others. There is a decent straight cutter article here, and an illustration of how to cut curves using tile nippers here. Use a stiff bristled brush to knock the dirt and mineral deposits off of your pot. Neither mastic nor thinset stick well to loose particles.

I generally use mastic for projects like this, and thinset for flat surfaces. The mastic has more body and lends itself well to working on vertical, angled, and even curved surfaces without too much slippage. I spoon a cup or so into a repurposed plastic bag, twist the bag and close it with a rubber band after poking the air out as much as possible and snip a tiny corner out to squeeze the mastic through. The bags hold up well, and when the tip dries out it seals the bag so the mastic inside stays moist. Pinch the dried end off to use again!

I'm not going to cover this entire pot. I want to make a foot decorataion along the bottom, and then we'll work the rim. Start with the bottom to give the mastic a little time to set up before we turn it over. You can make your pot with an even foot, or add some variety by choosing pieces of tile that are varied in height. Until you've made a few you may want to stick with tile pieces that are of equal thickness to get a nice even grout fill. If you're brave, jump right in with different thicknesses and build up your mastic to level the surface of your tile, but I'm warning you- this can be tricky!

Simply continue around, keeping the tile reasonably even with the bottom of the pot. As you near the beginning, try to fit your pieces so that you will end up with a reasonably uniform amount of space between the tiles. The mastic will still be soft, and you can adjust the pieces gently at this point, but don't try to move them after they have set up for a half hour or so, as you'll break the bond.

Use a stick or other wooden tool to gently clean excess mastic from the edges of the tiles. Globs of mastic sticking up will interfere with the application and final appearance of your grout.

Turn your pot over, carefully and set it flat. Try not to bump the tile at an angle, but use the flat surface to level the bottom edge if the mastic is still elastic. This is a good time to take a break. Walk away for a couple of minutes. (Get a drink of water, you know you're not drinking enough water!) Let the bottom tile set up a bit to minimize the risk of knocking it around while you tile the top rim.

I like to make a row of tile along the inside of the rim, since this is one of the places where the old pots look particularly fuinky. Cover it up!

After the inside rim is complete, start your exterior round, leveling as you go.

Pretty cool so far, eh? Now, you can call it good at this point, and let your mastic cure and then grout, molding the grout to cover the top rim, but that's a lot of grout, and I find that larger areas of grout, especially on the rim, tend to get banged and chipped easily, so I like to add one more round of tile for a nice, finished rim.

I'm using 1"x1" mini tiles that I scored about 40lbs of at a yard sale for $5. Use whatever size pieces will roughly span the width of the interior and exterior tiles. This is where it gets a little tricky. I lay the sized tile around the top until I have an idea of how many and the size of the triangular cuts I need to fill in. (Don't mastic these down, yet.)

Simple multiple triangle cuts. I eyeball it; I'm not too hot on measuring unless it's absolutely necessary. I never worry about cutting extra. I will always find a use for the leftovers in another project!

Fit the little triangles in, still just arranging- no mastic until you have a complete layout for the top rim. Then remove and lay the pieces around the pot, a few at a time and begin to place them on the rim using mastic. Be careful here not to allow the mastic to get messy between the tiles.

There we go! Okay, time to let the mastic cure for at least 24 hours. When it's dry and the tiles are firmly attached you may carefully remove any excess mastic before grouting. Speaking of grouting, it's another one of thise things that I can't do and take pictures of at the same time! (Besides, my pot has to dry). Come back next week for step by step grouting instructions, and maybe a peek at a new project to begin... I'm thinking bowling balls. Questions? Ask away, I've done a lot of this and I'll do my best to help.If you make a mosaic pot or project, leave a link in comments and I'll come visit- I'd love to see your creative upcycling projects.

© Terese Hartjoy, 2009

Junk Mail Mosaic

There are a number of ways to help reduce the amount of advertising circulars, fliers, in-mail supplements, and throw-aways that end up in the Land Fills via your mailbox. If you're absolutely sick of them all showing up in your snail mail box, by all means get active and head over to The Privacy Rights Clearing House, or Ecofuture and learn how to get off of all the lists that you possibly can.

We've done that at home in Thorne's World, but we still receive an inordinate amount of junk because our contracted mail carrier simply can't be bothered to change her routine enough to skip stuffing our box.

We compost most of the non glossy papers (after using them to line the bottoms of 6 large parrot cages), but the parrots don't like the glossy papers any more than I like the idea of my birds chewing on them, so the glossies just kept stacking up!

One frustrating day the stack fell to the floor and I noticed the array of color, the variety of type, the words and images and a light bulb went off in my head (a compact fluorescent, of course!) I thought: Collage! Mosaic! Scrapbooking! Art Journaling! Suddenly I had a use for all of my long saved magazines, and old calendars full of luscious images and colors as well!

A word of caution: If you use junk mail for scrap booking, or art journaling make sure you seal it, because it is NOT archival quality and will degrade over time and ruin your projects.

It's as simple as cutting (or tearing for interesting texture) your junk into squares or other shapes.

I separate them into little piles of similar color, or images so I can see at a glance what I have to work with. Can't you already see something waiting to be born in those tiny squares of color? Do the words and fonts you've snipped speak to you?

You can get as involved and planned out as you like, sketch your image on your base... or just dig right in laying color and shape and image down as it calls to you (my usual preferred method).

I generally use a 3:1 glue to water ratio of an eco friendly white glue to make and seal my paper collage and mosaic art.

This is a collage I made on one of about 50 plastic bathing suit displays that I rescued from a Retail store.They were tossed out and were destined for the land fill.

This can be a great crafting and eco lesson project for home schoolers and public educators as well!

Last year I discovered that I was in very good company with my recyled junk mail mosaics and collage, when I came upon the art of S. A. Schimmel. Schimmel works with business cards, old greeting cards, menus, junk mail postcards, cruise itineraries and paint. In Schimmel's own words her pieces portray “Advertising images married with advertising’s images.”

Across the Universe copyright SC Schimmel

As an artist she stands as a fine example to all of us to make beauty and art worth saving and preserving out of the "throw away" remnants of our consumer driven society.

What will you create?