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

Harvest/Corn Moon Swag Decoration

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!

It's almost here! Autumn is almost here! I'm so excited that I cannot contain myself! 

I just can't handle hot weather. The beginning of August was actually quite nice. It was cool outside and I enjoyed going out into the yard and doing things. It seems to have heated back up this past week though and now it's like an oven again. I just don't enjoy it. It's muggy and sticky, not my kind of weather at all. 

The name of the September moon gives me hope that my kind of weather is just around the corner. We are fast approaching the second harvest Sabbat and with it Autumn Equinox, which is my favorite time of year! 

This moon is commonly referred to as the Harvest Moon with Corn Moon being the second most common name. This is the time when the corn and barley are both ready for harvest. 

I decided to just use both names for my decoration. I do want to make a large corn swag like one that is found HERE, and I probably will make one of these later this month. I decided to use some blue corn that I grew in the garden a couple of years ago and dried. I was just throwing it in a basket as a decoration, it needed to be showcased better. 

I ran out to look for some things to put with my corn. I found some great decorative pumpkins, tiny acorns, berry/pinecone pieces and sunflower pins. I decided to use raffia as the swag base.

For the base, I grabbed quite a bit of the raffia and tied knots in it to make it strong and keep it as one long swag piece. Like so: 

Then I laid the corn down on it and decided where each placement would be. I  took the rafia and tied a simple knot around the corn to keep it in its place. Note: some of my corn didn't have tops, so I made tops with a corn husk/wheat decoration that I found. If you notice the corn on the right looks different from the corn on the left. I just cut the decoration apart and hot glued it to the top of my corn. Voila! The corn has a top now.

Next, I will attach the pumpkins. I am trying to keep everything nice and even, so I place the pumpkins in the empty spaces in between the corn. I just take a new strip of raffia and loop and loop it around the stem of the pumpkins and tie each one off.

I found some neat little fall leaf/berry/pinecone sprigs and I slid those in the raffia behind the pumpkin stems. I used the little acorn wire to hold the sprigs in place. 

The sunflowers that I found had clips on the back so I just clipped one at each end of the raffia. At each end I made a loop and knotted it for hanging the swag. And there you have it. Simple enough decoration and it doesn't take long at all to make. 

I hope you enjoyed this full moon craft and brightest blessings!

Saga