Making your own decorated gourds

Instead of having just pumpkins decorations for your holiday season especially for the fall and thanksgiving holidays, jazz up your house with this addition of decorated dried gourds. Gourds are another family of pumpkins but what are different about them is the elongated shape and the taste. You can find them in grocery or green market with so many varieties, sizes and shape. Try to select as many shapes and sizes as you can. Turn these gorgeous dried gourds into another level by painting them with colors, so they turn into marvelous sculptural-like. This craft is simple and easy to make. You can find the other materials and tools in any craft store and hardware store. They will look marvelous place as displays on your coffee table, dinner table or around the house. Let your imagination and creativity lead you.

Materials and tools you need:

• Dried gourds
• Fine sandpaper
• Kraft paper
• White primer
• Spray enamel or glossy spray
• Paintbrush
• Newspaper

How to:
To start this craft, place your work surface with newspaper to cover your table from the paints. Since this have to deal with spraying the dried gourds with paint, you can make this when the children is not around or make it outside the house.

1. First, clean the dried gourd with a cloth which was been damped with a bit of water. Let it dry for awhile. Then, sand off any imperfections on the dried gourd by using fine sandpaper.
2. Next, paint or spray the gourd with the first layer of white primer. When you finish, let the first layer of white primer to dry for overnight.
3. After overnight drying, spray the surface of the gourds with enamel or glossy paint. Spray the gourds by sections. Then let the sprayed sections dry out for at least 3 hours. Then turn the gourds again to spray paint in any unpainted section. Let the gourds dry out overnight. You can repeat this spraying process if necessary.
4. Finally, you can assemble this decorated dried gourd in a silvery platter on your coffee table or inside a ribbon wrapped basket as the dinner table decoration. You can choose any autumnal colors or hues to compliment the looks of each dried gourd or go unique with any contrast colors. The benefit of this decoration is that you can still use them after the holiday season as your house decoration.
   

Additional Reading:
http://www.marthasteward.com

Image Credit:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/92833011@N00/1449805424/