Gourd Birdhouse

Last fall, one of my good friends Lou Weigand, had a truck full of birdhouse gourds. I thought I'd like to take a stab at making them so I bought one. Isn't it pretty?

Here's how I did it. First I started with this dried gourd.

Then I made a circle on a piece of paper.

and cut it out.

Then I put the piece of paper on the gourd and drew a circle with it. Grampa Tom thinks I should have used a smaller circle and he's probably right. I am spacially challenged you know. I'll change that next time.

 Then I got out my handy dandy dremmel tool and cut into the gourd around the circle.

It didn't go quite all the way through, but it made a nice groove for me to finish the job with a box cutter.

The one thing I like about the size of this whole is that it was easy to pull the seeds and fiber out. I will probably need some sort of a bent hanger tool to remove them from a smaller hole.

Then once again, I got my handy dandy dremmel  tool out and made some holes in the bottom so it would drain.

and a couple at the top for the wire to hang it with to go through.

I'm way to cheap to buy ink cartridges for my printer. Many years ago, I got into refillable cartridges because it's a much more economical way to buy ink and the more ink you buy at time, the less you pay for it, so I got several big bottles of ink. But I just don't use the colored inks fast enough. They got thick and were gumming up my printer. I just hated to throw it away so I've kept it thinking it would be a good paint.

The first coat went on and dried really well.

But the second coat was still sticky and wet even after 24 hours.

and even after sitting a couple of days on top of the corn stove. So I finally rinsed it off and put some acrylic spray on it. I really like how it turned out!

I need to call Lou and see if he's got any left. I'm going to grow some of these this year, but they take a year to dry and I'd like to have some painted ones to take to the markets this year.

God Bless You All!

~Grama Sue