Tips for Painting 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. Painting a coloring, your gourds whether dyes work really well they go on really quickly. You do want to use gloves because they would stain your hands and there is no way to get them off other then you would have to wait and let it wear off. They come in lots of different colors, bottles last for about four or five dollars for a bottle of dye so it is pretty cheap as well. It is a alcohol base dye so it does dry very, very quickly and it does cover a very large area very quickly on the gourd as you can see. It is a very nice coloring. You can use little bit of alcohol too, if it is too dark for you wipe a little bit off with a paper towel but pretty much a gourd is very poorest so it is going to take whatever you put on to it. Pretty much instantness so it is a good thing if you got some scraps. Your piece off the top here is you cut something off or some old scarps when you bought your gourd it is a good thing to grab some pieces so you can practice and get a idea what the colors are going to look like on your gourd. But every gourd is going to be different so there, it is always a experiment and surprise to find out you know exact how that color is going to come out. Paintbrushes, I have a variety here it is kind of what your comfortable with, there is no reason why we use paintbrushes any of them would do. Simple ones, for acrylic painting up to the more fine one's for the oil painting they would all work. Whether you want a fine brush or a wide brush is going to depend on obviously your design and your area that you are covering. Again the leather dye dries very quickly so you can go right back on and paint your design right on top. Sometimes you would need to do a second coat to get your coloring that you would like on there depending on your gourd itself and want your base coat that you decide to go with. Sometimes it could take a couple of coats to get it to look how you want it but that is again your artistic flare that you get to play with. You can also use oil base paints as well either it works as well as the other. "