DIY Paisley Chickens made from gourds!

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For this project I used:

3 Dried Gourds
Acrylic Paints in light blue, dark blue, gold, brick red, white and teal
Polymer Clay
Hot glue
Krylon Clear Matte Varnish Spray

Our fabulously dressed chickens started out as these lowly dried gourds.  Well, everyone has to start somewhere, right?  These dried gourds have been sitting in my stash for several years now, just waiting on the right idea to come along.

In order to prepare them for painting, I scrubbed them each with a non-abrasive scouring pad.  It is good to use some bleach in your water to stop any of the molding that is going on.  A simple method is to spray them with bathroom cleaner (that has bleach in it) and then scrub them.

Because my chickens need to go together as a group, I chose a color palette that I would use on all the chickens.  My colors for this project are light blue, dark blue, gold, white, teal, and brick red.

I began by painting a base coat on each gourd, one light blue, one white, and the third- I added some white to my gold and painted it a light gold.  It took about three coats to cover the gourds well.

Drawing paisleys is a simple process.  They are basically tear drop shapes with a curl at the top.  I sketched different sized paisley all over the base of the gourd, turning some upside down and some sideways for variety.  I did not add them to the neck of the gourd, because everyone knows paisley chickens don’t have paisley on their necks.  Right?

I used dark blue to outline the paisleys on two of the gourds and the brick red to outline them on the yellow gourd.  I then started filling in the paisleys with color.  Each paisley is totally different from the next.  I did not go by any pattern or design, just filling them in as I wanted.

Some paisleys had flowers painted in them, some just had circular designs.  I added dots of color to some for a bit of variety.  Working with the same color scheme on all three gourds helps to make them match each other even though no two paisley are alike.

Now let’s work on those finishing touches!