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Anita Katich - My mom's broken figurine mended

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Anita Katich - My mom's broken figurine mended

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My mom had this figurine on her bookshelf for years (not broken). She passed away, June 5th, 2002, from Cancer. It had broken many years after that happened.

After my mom passed away, I turned to drugs and alcohol. My life spiralled up and down for many years. I was in and out of recovery since 2004. My stuff went into storage and moved from place to place. Things got lost, damaged and broken. I finally got a place of my own fourteen years ago. However, I kept partying and didn't care about belongings, only my addiction. I've been clean and sober-minded for eight years now. I held onto this broken native spirit. Now it has a new life and purpose. We may be broken, but never destroyed. We can be repaired and given purpose.

I mended it with a broken music player I got from the Goodwill store. I patched the bottom with leather and anchored it with jewelry wire. There were a few broken jewelry pieces I had around and decided to incorporate within the piece. This project was emotional for me. I never threw out the broken native figure because it belonged to my mother. Today, it has new life and beauty within the brokenness. The Mending Project by Lee Mingwei inspired me to tell a story.

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That plushie got the predator treatment.

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Ok so I rummaged through my cabinet full of old junk like a Halloween skeleton decoration from three years ago and a recently torn to pieces Pineapple drink plushie as well as a drawing reference figure thing. Grabbed some duck tape and one page of red construction paper and some scissors that are meant for cutting things like noodles and badda bing badda boom,

you’ve have a man ripping some poor dude’s skull out. I’m quite proud how it turned out. Simple and easy. Special thanks for Jan Vormann and his work Dispatchwork as an inspiration when it comes to using things laying around your bedroom.

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I decided to just play around with the items and see if I can make something I like our of what I have besides the two ceramics that I bought from goodwill. I broke the two ceramic pieces, played around with the composition just a little, and looked around my room for items that I have no use that looked pretty or usable to me. So I used some old items and new items which I thought would match the theme of time.

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These shoes have been nestled among other unused pairs of shoes, inside a drawer inside a closet, quietly remembering the days when they were allowed out to play. I last wore these shoes in 1998, New York City, the summer that swing dancing came back into style. Secure and low-heeled, they paired perfectly with a short skirt over yoga shorts and a cute top. Every Sunday, my friend David from New Zealand and I met up in the plaza of Lincoln Center to dance to live swing bands. These shoes held such vibrant memories of freedom and fun that I haven’t been able to part with them for 36 years.

I knew I wanted to do something with this project that would capture that feeling of dancing in the summer sun. The first step was to take them apart and clean off the decaying backs of the leather (pleather?) straps. I used heavy duty scissors that I bought for working with cardboard.

Rather than sketching in advance, I took the pieces and moved them around on a table to experiment with creating different rhythms and line and shapes just by rearranging the pieces. Once I had an idea of a composition that felt dynamic and asymmetrically balanced, I pulled out my heavy duty cardboard stapler and some armature wire. Through experimentation, I realized that stapling the wire to the pieces of pleather, and not twisting the wire, would allow me to move the pleather along the wire, even after assembly. This appealed to me because having a piece that can be constantly changed (and somewhat kinetic) enhanced the connection to the feeling of dancing.

I first tried a flat presentation against the wall, starting with the composition that I developed flat on the table. Then I decided that a more three-dimensional composition would be even more dynamic, so I moved the piece to the table and played with the armature wire until I found a composition that created the movement and balance that felt like it reflected the emotion I wanted to portray.

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This star shaped wicker basket has been collecting dust in my garage for years now, I think it originally carried some Christmas treats. A lot of the wicker was starting to break off and come unwound on the edges. I had a lot of pipe cleaners lying around so I wove them through the existing rows and bent them around the frame to secure them. The weaving process was kind of frustrating because of how brittle the old material was. As I was bending and twisting the pipe cleaners, I kept accidentally breaking off more and more of the wicker pieces and making a huge mess on the floor. I felt like I was destroying the basket even more throughout the mending process. I tried to make the weaving symmetrical and uniform at first, but it was too hard to keep up. I ended up weaving in as many pipe cleaners as possible and tucking/folding the ends in to create a sturdier base to keep building on. The end result is very vibrant, asymmetrical, and chaotically imperfect. In order to repair something that needs fixing, you need to bring strength in numbers with a variety of colors and sizes - whether that broken thing is a basket or a community - it can be healed with time, patience, and the help of many different individual strands.

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Water Tight Vessel Made from Discarded Sea Glass

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Water Tight Vessel Made from Discarded Sea Glass

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Above is a Bowl I made from sea glass found on the beaches on Panther Beach. I'm a bit of a rock hound and even though sea glass is virtually worthless it's still cool to see how nature turns our trash into something rather pleasant.

In short I had a bunch of sea glass I wasn't doing anything with. inspired by the kintsugi spoken about in class and finding it pretty sad that these were once part of many different types of bottles I figured why not make a new type of container with them (freeing up some space in the process). utilizing some cellophane, silicone water sealant, and some cardboard to help keep shape I started my vessel.

I started by creating the vessel upside down. Putting the pieces that would be the rim on first and then building towards the base. each piece being put on after meticulous planning, waiting out the drying process then starting again.

My biggest worry was not having enough glass and making the bigger pieces fit onto the mold without issue. since most of the pieces I had belonged to wildly different bottles of various shapes and sizes trying to figure out a pattern that worked was nerve wracking.

Luckily enough I had enough material to make an interesting little art installation in my own home that just so happens to bounce. But it holds water just fine so I can't complain too much.

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Ive always had this pocket watch I got from a trip to San Diego but it stopped ticking years ago. It kinda just sat in a drawer until I now.

I didn't have anything that was broken on hand since I usually throw everything that is broken to the trash but I needed to do something for this project. I spent roughly an hour trying to find something that I may have missed but nothing came up. I did however find this pocket watch.

I was not at all attached to it so I decided to break it to try and repair it. Like a caveman, I struck the pocket watch with some scissors, slowly cracking and chipping away at the glass. Eventually it gave in and I was left with the first image.

That was the easy part, now I had to figure out how to stitch it back up. I tried many different things like felt and fabric but nothing really felt right. Then I slowly came to the realization that I broke a perfectly god pocket watch for nothing. In a way, I felt bad. It had done nothing to deserve this. Then my inspiration struck.

I decided it would be rather funny and fitting to then make it seem like the pocket watch has in a fight and is now recovering in a hospital somewhere. It gave life and story to a rather uninteresting hunk of metal and gears. It isn't as glamorous as some other projects m sure, but I am content nonetheless

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Process

I had an old pair of glasses that were missing an arm, and the lenses were severely scratched. Using copper wire and a pair of pliers, I carefully bent and shaped the wire into an abstract form resembling a glasses arm. During my process, I was struggling to find a way to secure the arm onto the glasses, and I decided to pop out the lenses and wrap the wire around the frame. In doing so, I broke off a part of the glasses, which I reattached by wrapping the wire around it. In this piece, I used form and shape to creatively mend the glasses. I also contrasted the black glasses with the shiny copper wire.

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I was thinking of what I could repair, since usually in terms of items in my own home, besides things I wear myself, they get repaired pretty quickly. I actually like the look of my shoes getting really banged up, and my dad has been begging me to throw away this particular pair of converse I have, so I decided to maybe spice it up a little. I knew it would be too easy for me to just embroider and stitch it back up, since I have done something like that before, and I wanted to give it a bit of character for the journey it has given me. I also decided that it was time to do something with the spare parts I have for my gunpla, and the articulated hands from some of my kits are pretty flimsy in general, so why not use it. They have been sitting there for a good 2 years. I was also contemplating on whether or not to have the hands be grabbing the tear in the shoe, or come out of it, and ultimately, I decided for them to be ripping through, since I didn't have enough for it to look relatively good from the outside.

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sadly I forgot to take a real before photo. but what this looked like before is a normal working fishbowl.(no cracks no nothing plain Jane fish bowl)

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I purposely cracked the bowl because I didn't want it to hold any liquids, incase someone decided to actually put a fish in there. but my mom got the fish bowl from a birthday party as a table arrangement, and it has since became unused. once I cracked or broke it I put blue on the cracked edges then glued them back together. there was big spaces where the star fishes are. I made the star fishes with hot glue  than painted the plants and fishes from the inside of the bowl.

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Im so proud of this fish he is cuter than I thought he was going to be

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So for context, I chose this Pennywise decoration to repair because this was given to me by a family friend as a graduation gift who sadly passed away. So when this decoration got sun damaged I was pretty sad. It's made out of latex so of course it's going to be ruined. Well, from what I could salvage I was able to put some of the latex back on together with glue, and I decided to hand paint Pennywise entirely from scratch.

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Pennywise (What's damaged can be reused) (Before)

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Pennywise (What's damaged can be reused) (Before)

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While his mechanics stopped working, at least he can be used as a regular static scarecrow for Halloween.

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Forgot to put my process explanation in there but pretty much, what I did was use my old glasses which was one of, if not the first thing I thought of when this assignment was introduced. The thing with these specific glasses is that the left lens just went out of focus randomly. Recently earlier this year though, I dropped my most recent glasses and a car ran it over when I went back to find it. That one was mostly all smashed up when I found it but one lens was still surprisingly intact so I taped it to the left lens of these old glasses. When I got a new pair, I stopped using these. Besides that, what I did here was use (forgot what they're called ) the green thing that is used to usually tie plastic grocery bags up and used it to decorate the frame of the glasses. Besides that, used black tape to tie it up neatly.

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Assignment- Fix An Object You Feel Bad For - 3D Design - Edmor Paneda - 9-22-25 3-37 PM  (1)

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So I got this simple halloween wreath a few years ago from target. The original wreath literally had two fuzzy pom poms, the little banner sign and the skeleton man. About a year ago I accidentally broke it trying to put away after halloween season was over. So I put to the side and never fixed it again until now. So the image down below is what I worked on so I had some leftover little pumpkin decor and some fake flowers. I just glued them around the wreath, especially the area where it was broken to hide it. I also decided to decorate the skulls faces I just used some color sharpie and gave it a sugar skull look.

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While looking around for something I could use, I ended up finding the broom my dad broke a while back. Since the brush part was messy I first tried to clean it up by cutting off the broken bristles. I decided to “fix” the missing piece by crocheting it out of acrylic yarn, making the bristles out of multiple rows of chains, and a box shape for the top part that I stuffed with the bits of yarn I would cut off. For colors I tried to make it so that if you invert the picture it would switch the colors, but I didn’t have the specific orange I needed so the yarn I used was instead closer to yellow. The handle is also bent so I covered it by crocheting a small piece around the area, and connected it to a really long foundation chain I wrapped around it. While it could technically still be used as a broom, I think it’s time it retires that specific function

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Before: Some Gundams with the materials being used.

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My husband has a small Gundam collection but some got broken and some had missing parts. He knew about this assignment and let me use parts to use on some glasses I wasn't going to use but had laying around. I wanted to use glitter and a ribbon but I didn't get to finish 2 of the glasses like I hoped for. But in the end I finished 1 and I liked the end result even if its not as crazy as I wanted it to look.

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Finished Product: Not the best picture but it was only to show the glasses. :]

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When first making it, I had zero idea on what to do. Until my sister gave me a Starbucks drink. As I was drinking it, I noticed the logo was a mermaid. I always been a big fan of mermaids so I decided to try out using my new acrylic markers. I have never used acrylic markers before so I tested them out on this project. As I continue I slowly got the hang of it and actually started to enjoy working with them. I was overthinking too much to the point I didn’t have any motivation to do anything.

Where I got the idea from is my mom! She paints and scopes things on cups. I always see her painting on cups so I decided to try it out myself. Now finishing the it, I feel very proud that I tried something new.

The markers gave it a a rough textures and made everything pop out.

It may not be broken but it was about to be thrown out. Anything can be made into beautiful.

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I've had this like hole in my wall for years and I never really paid much attention to it. When I started doing the project I kept searching for something to fix and finally just looked at my wall and knew exactly what I wanted to do. The main obstacle for me was doing something that can be removed since I assume my parents don't want rhinestone walls. So, I found this double sided tape I have for press on nails and decided to use that. Putting the tape to the wall was by far the most annoying part because the covering was really hard to take off the tape and once I did it would stick to fingers and not the wall. But once I finally got it on I began to apply the rhinestones with a lip pencil (it was all i had on hand that would stick) and I realized very quickly that I didn't plan it very well. I wanted to use big rhinestones so it wouldn't take as long but since my rhinestones are for nail art there isn't that many. So I began with the biggest one, quickly ran out and began using smaller and smaller ones because i continued to run out. This also made the process become even slower because the smaller the rhinestone the more space to fill. Although, this bad planning came out really good in the end and I'm actually glad I did it because it gives a nice gradient effect. I love the end product and will leave it until my parents find out. :)

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I am using a broken necklace of my late mother's to decoreate a picture of hers that I transfered on canvas.
I left the strings that were torn as part of the image - so that it is obviuos that the necklace is a mended piece, which cannot really be used as many of the pearls were actually lost when the necklace was torn. I also left the clasp - which my mother would never leave visible. Sadly she is no longer here, so in a way it is a symbol that I am broken.

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I had another idea of using a mug, but I didn't have the chance to finish it. Instead, I found my old running shoe, which has a hole near the tip. I had some extra fabric paint at home, cards, gems, and hot glue. I replaced the laces and painted over the old color. Usually, I would sketch ideas out first in my sketchbook. I did my best to improvise as I went. I wish I had more time on the first project I had in mind. Maybe next time on another project. At the end, it turned out to be a steampunk and card theme shoe.

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nitially when I skimmed this assignment I went straight to this sweatshirt that I’ve owned since high school. I wanted to wear it again but was afraid of the sleeves fraying more, so instead I embraced it. I sewed each detail inside the sleeve itself, that way it wouldn’t catch on my hands and fingers. The sleeves are nice and smooth on the inside which I’m very pleased with. I’m really happy with the blanket stitch on the edges, I think it brings my design and color together.

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I didn't have anything that needed mending or repairing. So I asked if my friend had anything, and he asked his sister to give me her unfinished cheetah made from wires. She gave up making the cheetah, so I took that opportunity to make it into my own. I didn't want it to resemble too much of her work and decided to break the whole thing apart. Firstly, I took off the wires because there were too many of them. This process took a while as some parts jammed against the other wires. Eventually, it ended with lots of extra wire and the main portion of the body. It weirdly resembles a cage, which my friend said, "Why don't you turn it into some sort of cage and add this chicken inside?". He grabbed the chicken I had painted for him on Easter and shoved it inside, which was squished. I didn't really mind the idea but unsure whether or not it fitted the criteria. The next day, I decided it may not be a horrible idea so I took the caged chicken and expanded the cage so the chicken would fit more comfortably. Then I took some of the extra wires to make it more cage-like. There was a circle on the bottom supporting the chicken with 4 pillars shooting up with a hook. I added more support on the bottom by creating an x which the chicken will be sitting on. Then I wrapped the wires around from top to bottom and side to side. Then I hung it up. The results were alright, I don't think I really improved the unfinished project but I made it my own. At least it now tells a story. The chicken was caught murdering someone/something (I painted the chicken holding a knife with blood), now they're in a cage.

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This is my beautiful vintage quilt I brought at a thrift store about 1 year ago. One night it absolutely tore to shreds as my foot became stuck in a smaller hole tearing it more and more each and everytime I slept with it. Unfortunately the hole got so big I had to retire her or at least temporarily until I could fix her as best as I could. Since the fabric is fragile I needed to use a certain type of stitching technique to really make sure the frayed fabric would stay securely mended, that’s when the idea to teach beads along the seams came to me. When you sew on beads you have to do it in a way that’s secure for the bead and fabric. The blanket was already pastel so I thought it would be perfect to incorporate this beautiful message throughout the ripped seams. Not only is it representing resilience but it also provides a clear understanding of how we should do our part and protect our dolls.

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My creative process for this piece was last minute and hilarious. I originally didn’t have anything to work with since nothing in my home was broken, and even if I could’ve broken something, my mom didn’t let me do so since she liked to preserve things. But, by coincidence, my mom dropped one of her favorite coffee mugs and it broke. I saw the opportunity to reconstruct it into what I call “An Abandoned Shrine”.

When collecting the pieces of the broken mug, I had no sketch or plan of what to make out of it, so I pretty much winged its design by connecting the pieces together and around. My first draft was more open with an open-spaced ceiling, but that left out a lot of pieces. So I tried piecing the larger pieces together upside down and it looked like a cave. I added the other pieces to give it a more refined silhouette of a shrine and added some unused thread I had lying around from my quilt set. One of the artworks that inspired me was Mending with gold, to seal the broken vases with gold, but since I didn’t have anything to seal it with, I instead rearranged the pieces to stand on each other and use the smaller pieces for support. To give it that look of debris and stacked on rubble.

It was a struggle when trying to reimagine a mug into something else with so little, but I think I managed with what I could find and felt sorry for (I have many unused supplies, but my mom tosses them away). Regardless, it was super fun to make this and am really proud of it.

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I found my mosquito net had a hole, I immediately used paper flowers inserted to patch the hole. Like blooming flowers mending wounds in love. Don't let it tear more