Woman Uses Old Teacups To Create Breathtaking Wall Art On A Thrift Store Budget

Old china teacups and other antique dishes are easy to find at secondhand shops. Unfortunately, they often contain lead. In other words, you shouldn't thrift these items if you're going to use them for their original purpose. Instead, find them a new job that doesn't involve touching food or drinks. Many porcelain teacups have beautiful designs that make them ideal candidates for upcycling. Reusing old teacups in a DIY wreath is a possibility, but what can you do if your home is rife with wreaths? Turn them into mosaic-inspired orchid wall art as TikTok user @lila.mosaics has done. The process involves cutting teacups and saucers into pieces and arranging them inside picture frames.

To make this type of teacup art, round up at least a few matching cups and saucers, rectangular tiles in a complementary color, an old plant pot, and a picture frame large enough to hold the flower you're envisioning in your imagination. Also grab some objects to mimic stems and leaves, perhaps a long, thin roll of green clay and silk leaves from some faux floral stems. To transform the cups into flowers, you'll need a porcelain-cutting tool such as the Powertec Wheeled Tile Nippers. You'll also need a strong, ceramic-friendly glue such as E6000 craft adhesive.

Your first steps in making orchid art are cutting cardboard to fit your picture frame, orienting it vertically, and covering it with rows of rectangular tiles. When finished, it will look like a flat brick wall. Then, cut your plant pot in half lengthwise. If you don't have a tool for sawing through a ceramic object of this size, use an easy-to-cut plastic nursery pot that you can paint. Affix the half-pot to the bottom of the tile wall, and make a stem snake upward from the pot. Then, use your wheeled glass nipper to cut cups, saucers, or both into similarly sized sections shaped like pie slices. You'll need five of these for each orchid blossom.

To create orchids that look like those @lila.mosaics made, glue together three layers of porcelain pieces. Push together three slices for the bottom layer, assembling what looks like a pie with two slices removed. Construct a V-shaped middle layer with two more cup slices, and then use a tiny, leftover piece of a cup for the flower's middle, which will be the third layer of the stack. Attach your faux foliage so it looks like it's springing from the plant's container. To simplify this project, omit the pot and create a longer flower stem instead. Though @lila-mosaics chose tiles for the stems of her orchids, consider incorporating natural materials for a hint of realism. You could also experiment with different backgrounds, swapping tiles for soft fabric or chalkboard paint to introduce textural contrast. Save leftover teacups to repurpose alongside old coffee mugs, and set aside cup pieces for a future mosaic project.