Raku Pottery Inspired Vase

Raku Pottery Inspired Vase by Bea Grob

Today I show you how you can mimic the Raku fired earthen clay by using black Makin's Clay® and some mica powders.  But let's start at the beginning.  

Materials:

Makin's Clay® - Black 

Makin's Profesional® Ultimate Clay Machine®

Makin's® Clay Roller 

Two part mold making compound 

Mica powders 

Glass bottle 

PVC glue 

Instructions:

Whenever I go for a walk, I tend to collect things, this time I found some beautiful deeply veined leaves which I turned into a mold with some two part silicone mold putty.

I first made two equal sized balls from each of the putty components and then mixed them until they had a uniform color.  I rolled them out to about 4 to 5 mm thickness and pressed the leave into the silicone.

It doesn't take long to cure the silicone, so after a half hour or so, I was ready to roll out the black Makin's Clay® using the Makin's Professional® Ultimate Clay Machine®  on the thickest setting, #1.   I pressed the mold onto the clay and applied light pressure with the clay roller. 

That's what it should look like, you want some nice veins in your Makin's Clay®.

I covered a recycled glass bottle with some PVA glue and let it dry completely.  This helps to give a little bit tooth to the smooth surface and the Makin's Clay® sticks better.

Next, I used some leave shaped cookie cutters to cut out leaves shapes with the structure in it. (Note: the cookie cutter has two sided, a smooth one and the jagged one you can see in the picture, I used the smooth one). Before I attached them to the glass, I used different colors of Mica powder to enhance them. 

I started at the top overlapping them slightly, making sure that the first one still could be lifted, so that

you can squeeze the last one underneath the first one. I worked my way down and at the end I  and cut off any overhang at the bottom.

  

Voilà! That's how you get your own version of Raku pottery.