Tips for Drawing on Gourds

Video Transcript

"On behalf of Expert Village my name is Karen LoCasale and I'm here to tell you about crafting with gourds. Once you've figured out what design you want to actually put on your gourd, very simple to put on here. You can just use your basic pencil, you don't have to use a pattern like this, obviously you can certainly just hand draw on your gourd. They take, you know, very simple designs and to erase your marks, rather than you actually using your erase on your pencil, you can just use a damp paper towel or you can also use the moist towelettes, your baby wipes, that sort of thing that can basically just erase your marks right off the gourd. Let it dry, go back on there again and change it. Again the carbon paper works real well if you've got a design already drawn out on something, like say your stamp. And, you would cut that out, tape that on to your gourd over your carbon paper and then just take your pencil and again just draw your design on there and it will come off onto your gourd. Another couple little tricks that you want to do, keep in mind, if you're positioning your design, you can actually mark on your gourd, your quarter marks. So let's say you want to put, instead of having a design like this where it's going all the way around the gourd, you just want this portion of it, and you want it again on this side. So, mark your spots on your gourd and you can line your design up on the halfway to get it positioned where you want it. Another thing you can do is actually draw out your spots on the gourd and put your design in the center. So, again you can cut this out on a piece of paper and mark it out on your gourd. You can use masking tape to tape off stripes and that sort of thing. A lot of little tricks to getting a design on there just the way you want it. But, it is easy to change it if you've got it a little caddy-wompus and you know, it's not setting quite the way you want to. There are some little tricks and trade, there are some really good gourd books out there by Ginger Summitt and Bonnie Dixon and Maria Delose that have some more hints on how to get those designs on there but it is pretty simple to, simple basic carbon paper is your easiest way."