Lughnasadh Gourd Rattle

This sabbat completely sneaked up on me and I had NO idea what to create.  Thankfully Sosanna gave me an idea and I just so happened to have a box of dried dragon gourds. I've been busy painting murals in my grandchildren's rooms and gardening. I have thoroughly enjoyed the summer. We've had quite a bit of rain but my flowers are loving it. I've taken lots of pictures of the visiting butterflies and bees.

Now, I had not dried these for the purpose of rattle making. They are dragon gourds and they have all kinds of lumps and bumps making them look perfect for the body of a dragon, which was what I had planned on using them for. I've been letting them sit around for 2 years. They still needed to be cleaned. So, I found one whose seeds had loosened during drying and was smallish and would make a perfect rattle.

This is a really really simple craft. All you have to do is find a dried gourd and paint it. Of course it will be a Lughnasadh theme.

If you dried the gourd yourself it will probably need to cleaned if you haven't already done that. To clean you will need to let it soak in some warm water for a bit and then scrub it. It takes a bit of elbow grease to remove the layer of mold. The dragon gourds are a bit of a pain to clean because they aren't smooth. They have ridges and it is a bit harder to clean around those.

After you let the cleaned gourd dry thoroughly overnight, it will then be ready to start painting. For this, I'm putting a layer of sky colors on first. I put a really light blue, almost white, on first. Let that dry, then I watered down a darker blue and just placed and drizzled it here and there. 

I will be painting a sun at the top of the gourd. I believe I will give it a spiral look. So, first I am painting the yellow spirals. I'll let that dry and then add a bright orange. When that dries, I put a few yellow and orange dots,

 

 Now, on the handle paint dark green. When it dries take a dark gold and paint some straight lines. These will be your wheat.

I mixed my gold with a burgundy. I used that color and painted lightly on the same wheat lines, letting both colors show. 

Now, just add a few wheat kernels at the ends of each line with the darker mixed gold.

 

On top of the dark kernels highlight with the gold.

Now, take a thin liner brush and add little hairs with the darker mixed gold.

Now, at the base of the wheat, I'm going to paint some sunflowers. Start out with a dark brown circle and paint a lighter brown circle around the outside of the darker circle.

I'm sorry, I forgot to take a picture of the first layer of the petals of the sunflowers. Sometimes I just get started and forget to stop. Take a muted orange color and paint the petals all the way around the brown. Then when the orange dries, go over that with a golden yellow. 

Now take the stick end of your paintbrush and dip it in the golden yellow paint and make little dots in the center of the sunflower. 

For the leaves, I used two colors of green. Grass green is painted as a base color for the leaves, then a lighter kiwi green is painted over that. 

 

I'm going to use the same kiwi green to make stems for my dandelion puffs.

Now, take the kiwi lime and make two or three small leaves hanging down from the stem.

Now you are going to take the white and make some straight lines coming off the stems. At the end of those lines make little criss-crosses, like stars.

Put a few of the criss-crosses above the dandelion, like the wind is carrying the wishes. 

And there you have a nicely decorated gourd rattle to enjoy by the fire for Lughnasadh.

As always, I hope you enjoyed this craft and brightest blessings to you.

Saga

A Merry Yule Craft!

This article is part of Kallan's wonderful Sunday Stew. Please hop on over and read all the different flavors added by each chef. I know that you will love it!


We are back!! Did you miss us?

I thought for this entry I would give you a craft to make. I like to save my old lightbulbs all year for this one. It is a recycle craft.

Items you will need:

Empty egg carton
Burned out lightbulbs
Styrofoam cups
White paint
Glitter (optional)
Various other paint colors (black, orange, green, pink, red, blue, yellow)
Bits of ribbons and other decorative items

Mainly everything that you will use on this project are all recycle items. Even the scrap bits that you can't really use for anything else.

First, you are going to rinse off the bulbs, dry them and get an old egg carton to hold the lightbulbs while they dry.

Like this:

Now, when you paint them, they can dry easily. I didn't have spray paint, so I just slapped a couple of coats of white acrylic paint on them.

This year I thought that I would add glitter to them. I put a coat of modge podge on them and then sprinkled the glitter on.

While the glitter was drying, I prepared the snowman hats. Turn your oven on 300 degrees and let preheat. Now, when you are using styrofoam cups, you want to find the smallest cup possible, preferably 6 oz. This year, I ended up with 10 oz. No worries, they will shrink down in the oven and look cute, no matter the size. 

Put your cups on a sheet like so:

Pop them in the oven and watch them shrink. It only takes a few minutes. When they are no longer shrinking remove them and they will immediately harden. I kind of shaped mine, which was a mistake because I squished the cup too much and the lightbulb wouldn't fit in it and I had to re-shrink more cups. Smaller cups do better.

After you remove your cups, you can paint them. Now, paint your faces on your snowmen. I also decided to make a tree.

Hot glue your hats to your snowmen. For the tree ornament, I cut out some stars from felt. and glued one to the front and one to the back. Be careful with the glue for the hat. If your glue is high temp, let it cool for just a second before putting your hat on, the glue will melt through. 

And you can get all creative with whatever decorative bits that you have. 

For the hanger, just glue a bit of raffia to the back of the hat.

I've also put a pic of one of the snowmen that I made a couple of years ago. This one has a smaller hat. The cups automatically turn up around the edge while they are melting.

And here they are. You can get fancy or just plain. 

Just have fun!