Gourd Art

Here's a darker version of the gourd chicken.

Here's a highly embellished paisley design.

Barn red and moss green on gold paisley

In April, we decorated gourds with paisley designs and made chickens and gourds out of them. It is quite a process to get the gourds ready to decorate. The dried gourds must be cleaned and sanded smooth. These were painted with a double base coat. When the designs are finished and the pieces dry, they need to be sprayed with a clear coat to preserve them. It was a fun project, and there were many different interpretations of the fowl.

You start with a dried, cleaned gourd like these in their natural form.

Here are all the gourds in their base coats drying in the sun.

The golden gourds looked pretty just as they were here.