My Heart

Check out the new gourd art my boyfriend just finished. http://greenmanarchery.blogspot.com/2009/07/new-gourd-art.html

Gourd Hand Saw

We got a new gourd saw and I must say it's making my life so much easier. It's given me a renewed interest in gourd crafting. Yesterday I even dug out a gourd lamp I started a few years ago. I just got tired of all the hand sawing. So I flip it over and it had a spider inside and also silverfish. Yuck. So I learned something new...silver fish like to eat the papery part on the inside of a cut gourd.

So I used the new cleaning ball to get the papery part removed, and removed the spider of course, and then I cut out a lot more bits with the new gourd hand saw. It was fun. I also cut out a fairy gourd house with doors and windows, and I started working on my rain stick gourd I'm making from a snake gourd that I grew in my garden.

I'm having a blast. As soon as I have breakfast, I'm going to go work on my gourds some more.

New Gourd Inks

Welburn Gourd Farm is offering an opportunity to have your gourd art featuring their new meallic gourd inks featured on their website with a link to your website. To find out what it's all about sign up for their free newsletter. We picked up some of their inks when we went there last week, and I haven't tried them yet, so here is my opportunity. A new adventure in gourd art!

Gourd Necklace Display

I wanted to show off this gourd necklace display I made for showing off my necklaces. I found a big gourd that would stand by itself and painted it black. Or if you make one, you can leave it the natural color which looks a lot like skin. I try to find unique ways to display my jewelry because so many others use the same store bought displays. After painting the gourd, it's finished with a matt spray to protect it from scratches.

Field Trip to Welburn Gourd Farm

Photos from the Welburn Gourd Farm we visited today. Perfect weather, white puffy cirrus clouds and hardly a soul there on a Friday morning. They've got a much bigger store too, with new inks, dyes, and other products specifically designed with gourd artists in mind. And generous too. When a gourd was a bit too big for one price ring, he often gave us the lower price and he didn't need to do that. His name is Danny and he's been working there for five years.

We each got some big gourds for drums, plus some assorted gourds for other projects or just because they looked too cool to resist. I got some nice dipper gourds too.

Welburn just had a big gourd festival in June so I thought the inventory might have been picked over, but to my surprise every bin was filled as full as you can imagine. Enough to break the bank if you get too carried away.

They do mail order, but there is no substitute for hand picking your own gourds.

Gourd Inventory

Since my boyfriend wants to go to the gourd farm on Friday, he asked me to inventory our gourd stash. After moving bag after bag of gourds, I was surprised I hadn't seen any spiders. Lots of dust but no spiders. I decided to move one more big gourd that had been on the bottom of the pile, and just had a feeling that that was the one. I spun it around by the stem, and there was the grandmother of all black widows on that sucker. I splatted it with my shoe along with an egg sack. Ick.

Anyway, if anyone wants to pre-order a witch or santa gourd give me a holler. I'm going to start putting them in my Etsy Shop soon for the holidays, and I may as well start on yours first. Savvy?