painted gourd

Just finished a gourd for my garden. How's this?

WOW, you did a beautiful job. I LOVE it
Christine

Thank you! I'm now working on two others for DG members in a trade. I'm am going to have a beautiful garden when I get done with all my trades.
Mary

I love the gourd...is it a Dipper Gourd? Jo

No its a martin house gourd. I'm painting a birdhouse gourd with hibiscus flowers for one DG member and another DG member can't decide on what flowers so I guess I'll take my best shot and hope she likes what I do.
Mary

I just found your gourd picture when wandering around the DG site, You are very talented! Decorating gourds is one of the crafts I would like to learn. I tried some woodburning freehand designs on a couple of small ones last year, but did not get back to doing any more. i have several dried gourds that I can use and had a couple of bottle gourds come up as volunteers on my compost pile this summer. They are drying now.

I am sure glad I didn't discover this website before I retired--I never would have gotten anything done!
What kind of work did you do before you retired and moved to Kentucky?

Happy New Year!

Believe it or not, I worked 18 years as a nurse in Calif gave it up because of my elevated stress level and high Blood pressure. The last 10 years I've worked as a cashier at WalMart, and a convinence store called Fastrip. Plus 8 of the last 10 years I also worked as a Bookkeeper for an Oilfield Service Company and went to the University of Phoenix in Bakersfield for a BS degree in Business Administration. Working 2 full time jobs and going to school 1 evening a week, plus Team meetings for school and the hours spent on homework took it's toll.

I learned to paint on gourd back in 1999 when I quit nursing. I had a year off and nothing to do so I started painting Chistmas ornaments on coyote melon gourds and than discovered birdhouse gourds. AND in high school I took art classes for two years until the teacher refused to let me continue because she said I had NO TALENT. Than they made me take home economics. I went to a private catholic school. HATED IT!!!!

I found these great books by Lyn Wellford. She teaches you step by step how to paint rocks to look like animals, houses, flowers. From there I started picking up other books that showed me how to paint flowers and I started painting gourds. I've got 8 gourds I'm working on right now. I'll post pictures as I finish.

Got to go to the store and pay bills and post office. Talk to you later.

Here's picture of another gourd I'm working on.

I've got to get into doing some of my long-postponed craft projects such as decorating gourds and needlework, though my first priority is to finish sorting old business files, throwing out what I will never need (probably about 80%) and saving the records I must keep and any pictures or other mementoes I want to put in my scrapbook about the business. I hope the weather is bad for a couple of months so I can accomplish this!

I know how stressful nursing can be. My aunt was a nurse. At least working a Walmart or a convenience store you don't take as many worries home with you that can eat you up. Your teacher was certainly wrong about your lack of talent. Most of my creative projects have been with my camera in recent years. I started doing a calendar each year with photos taken here on the farm which are given to family and a few close friends. For this year I have chosen weather pictures. Last year was Sparrows (with shots of five different varieties), and I have done others with fungi, other birds, and several with flowers. I hope I can get out more this year as I really enjoy taking pictures and sharing them.

I have seen 17 species of birds just looking out the kitchen window yesterday and this morning. I start a new list each year. I closed out 2009 with 54 species total, even though I was sick for the last 6 months and barely got out. I guess I have seen a total of about 65 different birds since we moved here in 2004. Birdwatching is an inexpensive hobby, though my husband got me something as a special treat when I finished chemo in October. It is a really nice pair of binoculars that focus down to 3'. My old ones were fine for distance but I could not see anything closer than about 25 feet, so missed details on birds closer to my windows, The new binoculars are wonderful.

What does it cost to do a calender? That sounds like fun. I also am enjoy taking pictures. I used to have a 35mm Canon with a zoom lense, closeup lens ( I could take pictures of ant and have it look like they were hugh). I was surposed to leave the house early 1am once to go do a photo shoot for someone. They wanted their pictures taken at dawn and I had a 3 hour drive to get there. They were going to pay me $500. to do the shoot. I had my car all packed and laid down for a two hr nap before leaving. Anyway I got up and found that me car had been broken into. They found my camera case down under everything in trunk and took it and even a library book off the front seat. $1000. in camera equipment gone. I have not been able to replace it. So right now I use those cameras that you take the pictures and than turn in the whole camera. One of my hopes is that we I get me disability I will be able to get another good camera and go back to taking my pictures.

I am sure that if I had a computer program I could do the calendars more cheaply, but it is easier for me to burn 13 pictures (cover and 12 months) to a CD and take it to Kinko's. The price depends on quantity, but I can get 10 calendars for just over $15 each, including good paper stock, spiral binding, hanging hole punched, and a gift box. Several people have said my calendars are so nice I should try to sell them, but I could not sell them for enough more than I have in them to make that worthwhile. I'd rather keep them as a limited edition.

I used to shoot 35mm occasionally, but I am so cheap that I was too stingy with film. I went to digital in 1999 when I was preparing to go to China for work. The camera I have uses standard floppy disks, which I can erase and reformat after uploading pictures worth saving to my hard drive, so the media cost me nothing. It is a Sony Mavica FD91 that cost almost $1000 when new, but I could justify for my work. I bought a backup just like it a couple of years ago for $125, including case and all accessories. It is a great camera with 14X zoom. You might check EBay for bargains. Sorry to hear about your breakin and theft. That's a real bummer.

Thats interesting. I'll have to check into that computer program with my friendly computer geek. See if he has it.

Marti can you tell me anything about apple gourds I have some started need to know when to pick how to dry and how long this takes and what you have to do during the drying time thank you sissy70--judy

Sissy, just let the vines go until they start to die off. Let the gourds dry some on the dead vines. If you need to move them, clip them off and put them on a wire rack and let dry. It will be next year before you can use them. They will develop a moldy look and that can just be washed off next year before you do anything with them. Some people just leave them on the ground, after the vines die, and than pick them up in the spring.

thank you Marti judy

Your welcome. Let me know how it works for you.