One of the plans that B brainstormed while the gourds were drying was to making lanterns from them. When I came home from a field trip with Charles' class last Friday, he had managed to fulfill phase one of his lantern vision. Using a dremel tool, he cut two holes in the gourds and pulled out what remained of the dry innerds (very loofah looking hugh?).
Then using a string of Christmas lights, he created a cozy fall setting over our porch table. The look of it was fantastic, bet he wasn't done yet.
He decided that he wanted a warmer more transluscent feel to the gourds to highlight the natural variations in their shells. Using a combination of boiled linseed oil and and mineral spirits, he began to soak the gourds for several hours each and then laid them out to dry.
With this little bit of added creativity, this is what we were left with. I so love this!
Since this is our first time experimenting with gourds, we didn't plant any this year, we wanted to see what we would end up doing with all of the ones we had finishing from last season. We are pretty excited with all of the ideas that are flowing on what to do with them. We may just need to find a bunch of gourds from a local farm to dry out for next year until we plant another batch to dry for 2013. Who wants one??
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