a gardening blog

Whoo-hoo, I finally found some time to start decorating the birdhouse gourds. I started with 2 of them and have another 2 to go. As you may remember from the last post in the series, I had cleaned out the gourds, saved some seeds, and prepped them for painting. Raiding my husband’s office, I borrowed his acrylic paints and paint brushes and got to work.

Painting supplies

• Variety of paints
• Different sized paint brushes
• Plate to mix colors (disposable plates work really well for this)
• Glass jar with water to clean your brushes
• Prepped gourds

I had the idea that I wanted to make one of the bird houses look like a gnome’s house, complete with a thatched roof and mushrooms growing alongside of it. Here is the finished product.

Gnome house

To make the thatched roof, I just blended colors together but didn’t mix them completely. I wanted streaks of different colors to show through. Here is a close-up.

Thatched rood close-up

I did a similar thing to the grass along the bottom.

Close-up of grass

For the second gourd, I was inspired by our trip to Australia a few years ago. (I highly recommend visiting Australia. It’s absolutely beautiful and the people are so friendly.) I particularly loved the Aboriginal artwork. It was full of rich symbolism and the colors were so vibrant. Using my memories as inspiration, I painted the other gourd in a bright red-orange. I made the paint a little thinner so that that the markings on the gourd would come through. It kinda looks like a cave painting, don’t you think?

Aboriginal-inspired gourds

I think I need to make a trip out to a home improvement store and buy something to seal it with. I don’t think acrylic paint will survive the elements without some protection. Any recommendations?

Other posts in the series:

• Birdhouse Gourds – Part 1
• Birdhouse Gourds – Part 2