How to Make a Shadow Box: Preparing the Gourd

Video Transcript

"On behalf of Expert Village my name is Karen LoCasale and I'm here to tell you about gourd art. Working with your shadow box. We've picked out the shape that we want and your going to cut out your design that you want, make it as big or as little as you need, starting with your pilot hole and then use a drill or a craft saw, whatever works for you. l like to use a drill and then I use a jigsaw and I cut out my size and it's not that important at this point, just see how it works for you, you can always go back in and take more out if you need to. Make your edges as jagged as you want to, make your design however you want to, that's where you kinda get to play with it at this point. So, you get it cut out and get it to where you like it and then to get this nice burnt look on here we actually use a hand blow torch like this, simple hardware store item. You do want to have a mask, and you do want to have water available with you, this gourd can catch on fire, which is basically what we're trying to do, and so you do want to have some water available that if it starts really going that you can, so as you can tell here it burns very, very quickly. And, you can let it do what you want, you can stop it if you don't want it to burn anymore, or you let it keep going, that's entirely up to you. But, you do want to make sure that you've got this cooled down completely, don't walk away from it because it can continue to burn on it's own as you can tell."