Fixing a Marble Tray with Kintsugi

While perusing the wares at Goodwill one day, I spotted a marble tray that caught my eye. It looked relatively modern and new, but piqued my interest nonetheless. Upon further inspection, however, I realized that it sported a long crack/gouge that ran across the top. Right away, I knew it was the ideal piece for me to attempt a Kintsugi type of repair.

And a closer-up look at the crack across the marble…

Based on the odd white sticker, I gathered that this marble tray was a brand-new piece that had gotten damaged during the transit process. And because it wasn’t actually broken into separate pieces, I wouldn’t be employing true Kintsugi. But either way, it ended up in my cart and I was on a mission to at least give it a try.

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Marble Crack Repair

My plan for the marble tray was fairly simple: Fill in the crack/gouge and then paint over the repair with gold. Again, not truly Kintsugi, but the essence of it was the same: repair something broken and celebrate the healing in a beautiful way.

To do so, I assembled a few elements of repair, starting with a tube of spackle from our garage. Just holding the tube of spackle brought back all the memories of moving from apartment to apartment, and filling in all the nail holes before move-out day!

First, though, I took a precautionary step to help keep spackle from sticking to the smooth, uncracked portions of the tray. To prevent this, I used a small paint brush to “paint” Vaseline right along the crack on both sides.

The Vaseline would act as a barrier of sorts. You might remember me using it in a similar way on this ice bucket makeover project.

Then, I applied spackle to the crack, using a coffee stirrer to help push extra material into the deeper gouges.

Now, as you know with spackle, you traditionally use a spackle knife to remove the excess material to ensure a smooth, flat surface. But I wasn’t keen on dragging metal across the top of the marble tray.

So, I used an expired plastic card (last year’s AAA card) to do so, and it worked like a charm.

Once the spackle dried completely overnight, the areas that were more deeply gouged had sunken in a bit. So, I did one more treatment: lining the crack and deeper areas with spackle and using my old AAA card to leave a smooth, flat surface.

Kintsugi-Style Paint Job on a Marble Tray

After the second application of spackle, my marble tray looked like this. The surface was flat, but the spackle line was gritty/sandy to the touch (as spackle tends to be).

To cover the spackle (aka, “Kintsugi”), I selected this gold leafing pen to paint over the spackle in gold.

To be on the safe side, I carefully brushed on a fresh barrier with Vaseline again. I wasn’t quite sure how much of it was left after dragging my AAA card over it twice. Better safe than sorry, right?

After going through the motions of starting the paint flowing (shaking, pressing the tip down repeatedly on scrap cardboard, etc.), I began to meticulously cover the spackle. And right off the bat, I was quite smitten with how it looked.

The paint pen was very opaque, and the coverage was excellent. But I went ahead and did two coats, waiting a day in between to allow it to dry. With that, my marble crack repair with Kintsugi was (nearly) done!

Lastly, I brushed on a thin coat of polyacrylic over the gold. After that dried, I carefully wiped off any remaining Vaseline with a soft cloth.

Fixing a Marble Tray with Kintsugi

Now, I’m sure it’s possible that there are mediums other than spackle that you could use to fill in cracked marble. But I tell you what- it worked pretty darn well in this case.

And while actual Kintsugi mends broken pottery pieces together in a beautiful way, this isn’t quite the real thing. But I love how it looks now and the marble crack repair was quite simple.

And the gold leafing pen is such a good match to the gold legs on the marble tray, isn’t it? Just pure dumb luck, I suppose…

I hope you enjoyed this fun thrift store repair! I’m definitely interested in trying Kintsugi on other broken pieces from the thrift store, too. But I’d need a Kintsugi kit for that- one that comes with the right kind of adhesive and gold powder.

Gotta love finding broken treasures at the thrift store and making them new again! Plus, not all cracks need to be repaired. Sometimes, you just turn the object into something else entirely instead- like I did with this teapot.

Craft on!

S

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