Getting Gourds Ready to Paint
You will need:*Bleach
*Water
*Basin (rubbermaid totes work great)
*Scrubby (shown below - sold the dollar store)
*Rubber Gloves
*Flat Clear Krylon Sealer (spray paint section)
Ratio approximately 2 parts water and 1 part bleach. Preferably outdoors. Once the molded gourds have been soaked and rolled around in the tub... about 10 minutes... GET YOUR RUBBER GLOVES ON... then scrub the molded skin right off! Rinse and let air dry. You can choose to sand them before you SEAL them with Krylon Clear Sealer / Finish. Krylon has a sealer- FLAT Sealing with a non glossy finish allows the paint to grab and keeps it from peeling. DecoArt also makes a Clear Matte Finish Spray - I LOVE that stuff!!
Now your ready to PAINT them!! That's the fun part. One of my favorite ways to basecoat just about anything is by color meshing.
Here is a YouTube video of me color meshing a pizza pan.
The minion (live pumpkin) was auctioned off and brought in a good chunk of change for
Habitat for Humanity.
*YES, you can color mesh paint on LIVE pumpkins and gourds too...:)
Color Meshing is AWESOME on metal too... just be sure to sand first and seal with a matte sealer
This is the Jolly Green GIANT Pumpkin I painted for Fox Valley Tool and Die's fundraiser for Habitat for Humanity
Here are a few other gourds I painted as raffle items for a fundraiser we do each Christmas to raise money for the kids at Rawhide in honor of my late Dad.
Hugs,
Kathy
