Faux Frog Pate de verre

This is the Original Pate de vere Frog Dish

 

This is my copy:

Pate de verre definition: 
 a decorative glass made in a mold 
in which powdered glass of various hues
 is mixed, blended, and fused. 

 ~~~~~~~~~~~

To create this Frog Dish

You will need:

Premo Translucent Clay

Pasta machine or rolling pin
(Opt: round glass paper weight)

Tubed water colors
(Hunter green, Sepia, Thalo Green)

Soft Pastels
(Rust, DK Brown, Black)

Tissue blade

Assorted sculpting tools

Corn starch
polyester batting (to shape while curing)
dish to hold shape with curing
Optional but helpful, A ton of patience!

Condition enough clay to create the size bowl you want to make.

Scrape some soft pastels to color the clay. (Rust & Dk Brown)

Roll some of the clay on the medium setting of your pasta machine and begin to color. This is a very messy process.  I also started using tubed water colors to try to match the colors in the original. You can add water to the water colors to try and blend and smooth, but it seems to be impossible to copy the look of Pate de verre exactly. 

This close up shows the tiny marks caused by scraping larger pieces of pastel.

 It’s hard to get rid of these spots once they get into the clay.

You can see the picture of the Frog Dish I was trying to copy, try to get your colors as close as possible.  Begin to shape the dish by pushing the clay in around the edges.

Roll the clay to get the colors to blend. (getting the colors blended is the hardest part of this whole process). I found that using a small glass paper weight helps to roll the clay and it doesn’t interfere with the raised edge as a roller would.

 

Begin to add Black (or Sepia) to the section where the frog will be sitting, and color some of the clay for the frog sculpture. I used tubed Sepia watercolor for this.

This is where it really gets messy. :)

The dish is starting to take shape, and it's smaller as well. 

Time to start sculpting the frog.

I was trying to get the frog to look as close as the original as possible.

When you have finished sculpting, time to position the dish into a form for baking. 

 

 This picture shows how I placed the clay in a dish, there is also some polyester batting underneath to make the slope closer to the original.

I placed the dish in a cold oven and set the temperature for 275 degrees, 

then set the timer for 1:40 minutes.

When curing is finished. allow the clay to cool completely while it's

 still in the dish so that the shape remains the same.

I buffed with a dremel to make it shine. 

 

That's it, Hope you enjoyed the tutorial.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 If you make your own Pate de verre Frog,

 please send me a picture and share your experience with me.

  You can find me on facebook  User name, "Evie Campbell".