If you need a fun art project you can do with your family on a cold winter day, keep on reading—I’m going to show you how to turn small, ornamental gourds into little holiday snowmen that the entire family will enjoy.
What you’ll need:
First, you’ll need a small, ornamental gourd (dried and cleaned). You’ll also need white Gesso, acrylic or craft paints, paint brushes, and a black permanent marker.
Start off by choosing a gourd with a good shape for a snowman. If you are having your children take part in this project, be sure to prep the gourds ahead of time.
Each gourd should be prepped with one coat of gesso, let dry, and then painted with a coat of white paint over that. You can use a hairdryer to speed the process.
Once you’ve prepped the gourds, everyone can begin to add the snowman’s features such as eyes, carrot nose, mouth, and arms.
You can also outline the other details like a scarf, vest, hat, or earmuffs at this time too. I painted mine on, but you may find a marker to be easier, especially for the kids.
Once the outline is in place, it’s time to add color!
Make a gourd snowman for each member of your family, if you’d like. . . you can embellish them with little straw hats, use strips of cloth for scarves, sequins for eyes and buttons. Let your inner child come out and play.
And here’s one final tip: a gourd’s natural shape makes for a great snowman—but it might not stay upright up on its own.
If that’s the case, just glue a penny or nickel to the bottom of the finished gourd to give it a flatter base to stand on.
Enjoy! :)
Please
stumble it so others will find it or check out the related posts below.
Finally, my "big project" is finished! It’s been a crazy day with a lot going on, but foliotwist.com is finally live and online! Since I’ve kept it a complete secret up until launch, here’s a quick (mostly visual) overview of what it does. . .
read moreIn my previous article I shared several important tips for safely carving gourds. With those tips in mind, let’s get started on a gourd or two! Today, we’re going to clean and prep a couple of gourds for our next project—making Christmas tree ornaments. You may find that you already have every. . .
read moreIn today's tutorial I'm going to show you how to make a special "Angels & Snowflakes" gourd ornament for the holidays. You can apply many of these techniques and instructions for any kind of gourd decorating you're interested in. Assuming that you've already cleaned and dried your gourd, i. . .
read moreGourds are incredible natural canvases for art. Many cultures around the world have used decorative gourds in one form or another for hundreds of years. Some believe that gourds possess magical properties; others simply use them to make vessels, musical instruments, ceremonial masks, jewelry, . . .
read morePriming a canvas for oil painting isn't difficult, and it's not even necessary if you're using pre-primed store-bought canvases. But if you've made your own stretcher bars or even just stretched un-primed cotton canvas over store-bought stretcher bars then it's very important to use Acrylic Ge. . .
read more
Subscribe to EmptyEasel's free weekly newsletter for artists.
Sign up today!
