How to Add Embellishments to a Gourd Mask

Video Transcript

"On behalf of Expert Village my name is Karen LoCasale and I'm here to tell you about gourd art. Gourd mask okay so we have our gourd mask colored and burned and we have sprayed it with our sealant to keep our coloring in so now we are going to add our embellishments which would be our feathers. What we would like to do on here is I actually I will show you the back side, it is a little easier I actually do drill holes for each individual feathers. First what I usually do is lay the mask out and lay my feathers out get them to the how many feathers you want and what positioning you want them in and then once I got that displayed out and how I like it then I can actually drill my holes. Slide my feathers in and I use usually just Elmer's wood glue works fine. If you fine with the larger feathers that they're not holding as well you can use two part epoxy on it to hold those feathers in. You might have to play with it a little bit on your holes with your angles because your feathers are not straight they like to go one way or another. So it is just a matter of working with them. Another thing to think about as well is the feathers that you use you want to stick with primarily with your domestic birds. Turkey feathers, chicken feathers are fine, pheasant feathers are fine. What you need to stay away from is any predatoral birds that means no eagles, no hawk, no owls, no ravens, any of the predatoral type birds. If you are unsure at all I would say don't use it. To be on the safe side because it is illegal to have those types of feathers and to be using them for either your own use or for resale. So if you are unsure I would say go ahead and not use those but your turkeys and your chicken and pheasants are all fine and there is a huge variety of them. As you can tell on this one particular one this is turkey but so was this and so was this so you do get a large variety of coloring and shapes and sizes. Then you can go back and add in embellishments as you like whiskers on this particular one and you can do a little bit of earrings, a little bit of bead work whatever you would like to do. "