A Teapot Lamp is born
A client had seen my other handmade Mosaic Teapot Lamps at my numerous other websites….she fell in love with my Teapot Lamps and ordered one….
I looked for a discarded silver plated teapot at a small shop and found one which was just begging to be transformed, something similar to this one.
I started out cleaning up this teapot, sanded, ruffed it up a bit to prepare it to take a white primer and paint. Before that I removed the finial on top of the lid, drilled a hole, marked the bottom where I would drill the hole for the threaded hollow rod to go through all the way through the top. I secured the threaded hollow rod with washers and nuts. That was a few days of work.
Priming and painting, a few days to dry again. After primer and paint where dry, I then cut up vintage bone china plate rims with my tile nippers, added stained glass pieces which were also cut over and over again until the fit to the curved body just right and glue them to the body with thin set.
Cut up china plate rims with stained glass, cutting them up just so that the footer is removed, the thick rim underneath the plate on which it sits on the surface, (that’s called a footer) is an art in itself as you do not wish to destroy the beautiful pattern of the china plates.
Cut up china plate rims with stained glass, you wish for the china plate rims to lay flat, but don’t loose the beautiful pattern. Sometime the rims need to get an extra nib to make them lay flat. Curved pieces are perfect here to cover the belly of the Teapot.
Because of the curves on a Teapot Lamp, you can only mosaic one side at a time and need to let it dry, at a later day/time proceeding to the other sides, and partially the bottom. Then I add stained glass around the rim of the lid and right below it. And waiting again for the thin set to dry for quite some time before I can go on to the grouting of the entire teapot body.
After usually at least a week the mosaic on the teapot is ready for grouting. The grout just has to be the right consistency to get into all the nooks and cranny’s of the mosaic, you let it sit and let is slag, meaning it will change consistency while sitting. I then grout the entire teapot and let it sit for about a couple hours until I wipe the grout overflow of the teapot body with a wet sponge. Then it will sit again for a while until I wipe the grout film of the stained glass and fine bone china pieces cut from plate rims to make everything shiny, clean and bright .
I wait a few more days normally before I seal this mosaic on the teapot body with a tile sealer.
My client needed this in a hurry for a gift so I sped up some of the process a bit to help her out, by using a hair dryer. That is not recommended though…..(smile)
Here we go all done so far…
The lid was then covered in thin set and glue to build it up a bit, I then set in all the handmade clay roses, vintage rhinestone brooches, cameos, pretties and baubles which would dry within the thin set/glue and be secured.
In the meantime I made the lamp shade, covered in pretty fabric, finished the Shade up with lace edge and ribbon/gimp trim. I threaded the electrical cord through the hollow metal rod and connected the cord to the actual light kit and mounted it on the top of the hollow rod. Put a light bulb in, yep it works, all good….Topped of the spout with a Crystal Chandelier Tear Drop and a Rose.
Here is the finished project and my client was very happy, which in turn pleased me and made me happy.
As one can see there are hours and weeks going into one of these projects, this was a 4 week project. It is very time consuming, but it love doing it , never the less. And happy clients is a wonderful reward.
Monika of Myeuropeantouch
https://handmadeartists.com/shop/Myeuropeantouch