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.