Gourd Jack-O-Lanterns

Two years ago my brother (who happens to be an auctioneer) brought me 4 or 5 large (think refrigerator) boxes full of many kinds of gourds...he knows me well enough to know that I am a crafty person and thinking that more is better, he bought them for me for a bit of nothing!  Seriously the boxes were so big it was difficult for me to get around in my garage. 

I didn't know there were so many kinds of gourds.  These gourds were seasoned, they had laid out in the field and looked rough, but if you scrubbed them until your fingers were falling off there was a fresh lovely gourd underneath.

I went to the library and checked out a gazillion books on what the heck to do with gourds.

(As a side note here, isn't the afghan my mom made for me in 1977 beautiful? It's a knit pineapple pattern and I love it and keep it on the back of this mission rocker.)

Hmmm, birdhouses, birdhouses, birdhouses was what I found in those books...so I made birdhouses for my church's annual fundraiser.  I made lots of birdhouses and painted them all so cute with bumblebees and ladybugs and polka dots and flowers and whatever else I could think of...and still I had probably a thousand gourds in my garage, lurking. 

So I found a magazine that had a painted gourd pumpkin on the cover of it...not sure but I think Martha Stewart had something to do with that magazine.  But that was two years ago and my memory is no longer present, so I can't really remember....maybe it just reminds me of something that Martha would do.

Martha probably would have dusted these guys off before taking photos of them to post on the world wide web...but then again, I am not Martha!

The seeds are still inside them, I didn't cut into the gourd. I looked for gourds that were somewhat shaped like a pumpkin.

I scrubbed the dickens out of them to get that outer skin off and then I painted them in streaky orange paint mixed with some browns...so create those ribs that pumpkins have.

I just used acrylic paint and no primer (I am sure Martha would have primed them!).

I wanted a vintage style face on them so I googled "vintage pumpkin face" and came up with these faces. 

They turned out really nice for a fly by the seat of your pants project.

I like how they look on top of my wood burning stove....

and here on my picture shelf!

Now about those gourds....I sold a bunch of them...gave some away...cracked open a few of them accidentally and saved the seeds and then lost the seeds permanently.  I still had a few boxes left at this point.  I finally gave the rest of them away.  People were afraid to come to my house because I made them take gourds home with them.

This spring I was cleaning out the garage and was trying to push a box back on a shelf, but it wouldnt' go...you guessed it, there was a gourd back on the shelf...I tossed it out in the back 40...I never want to meet another gourd again!  Except these of course!