Jack-O-Lantern Gourds
This birdhouse gourd jack-o-lantern project has been a long time in the making. It started last summer (2008) when we planted a birdhouse gourd vine in our garden. We got the plant into the garden too late in the season to get any gourds large enough to make into birdhouses, but we saved them and dried them in the garage for more than a year for whatever project they might inspire down the road.
I was just waiting for the Halloween season to arrive in order to see if my idea would work. The gourds, when dried, looked like this:
The discoloration and mold is normal. The preparation for painting was a bit more labor intensive than I had planned on -- it required soaking and scrubbing the outer waxy layer off with a heavy duty scouring pad and a lot of "elbow grease". Rudy was not able to help me with this step, which was a disappointment for me.
Rudy was, however, able to help a lot with the layers of orange paint and the faces. After the last orange coat had dried, I drew the outlines of faces in black Sharpie marker and Rudy and I then filled them in with a couple of coats of black paint. It was harder to paint the faces than I had anticipated and I was surprised to find that I wasn't much better at it than Rudy was.
We then sprayed them with a glossy indoor/outdoor sealer. Lastly, we added some string and some wire to attach them and so now have a really cute jack-o-lantern garland for our front porch.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009 at 08:19PM Share Article Print Article in other crafts 3 Comments 
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Reader Comments (3)
Wow, you grew those?!? Your idea of painting them turned out great! The other day I bought a spaghetti squash at the commissary and the produce man asked me if I was going to cook it or just use it as a decoration.
The garland looks great! Do you think it will keep for multiple years? I assume with the sealer it should be fine ...
I'm hoping, of course, that it will last through the years. The weather of last week really tested its endurance, but it seems to be no worse for the constant rain. I might have Ed spray an extra layer of sealer before we put it away for the winter, just to be sure. The gourds themselves dry very nicely and would have stayed very hard if they had been kept dry in the garage for another year or more -- they really are perfect for the project.