Passing Time

I have a collection of hourglasses in one my school offices that measure anything from one hour to 30 seconds. Seven of them look like this one, except the sand color varies. I bought them at Kohl's several years ago and enjoy them except for the fact that they seem fragile without a base and grab arms to turn them over.

Lately I've been wondering if I could make what I need from the handles of dipper gourds. I can remember growing dipper gourds that seemed to have long, skinny handles. I believe using a canteen gourd would give me the top and bottom base and be the stable foundation to hold the handles as shown in the sketch.









10-10-14
Here are three of the hourglasses (from left to right): 9", 11" and 6". I need to find the dipper handles. Curvy and irregular would be best to maintain the perception of time as a moving target.

I need to do some investigating..MMMmmm...



A Cracklin' fun time!
CAM

1-15-15

Got some success at the Virginia Gourd Festival!  The gourd grower vendor had some long handle dippers with skinny handles. These will make terrific arm braces for the sides of the hourglasses. There are some twisty handles that will add a margin of interest and luckily my hourglasses are different sizes so certainly I can manage to work the right sizes with the right hourglass.

The tops and bottom bases will be painted to match the hourglass sand. They are the leftovers from cutting out other gourd products. I'll probably pinch off the pointy ends that serve no purpose, but the curved nature of the gourd remnant will serve as a good cradle for the top and bottom, and will provide a stable surface for attaching the dipper handles.

So!  We're crackin' on this project!
CAM



2-2-15

A visit to the local Hobby Lobby garnered more hourglasses - different shapes and sizes. With this added number of naked hourglasses, I have begun to wonder about altering the plan a bit since I will not have enough long handled gourds to use as the vertical supports for the two bases holding the hourgalss. What about wires or some other sturdy support system? In this image of antique hourglasses, there are wire vertical supports. In fact some only have two supports, not three. The hourglass on the left has a wooden case-like structure that hold the hourglass inside. A whole gourd could be made to house one of the hourglasses!

To sum up, we have a handful of gourdy possibilities for this project:

1) make bases, top and bottom, from the gourd scraps
2) make vertical supports from the necks of long handled gourds
3) make vertical supports from twisted cords of wires
4) make a hourglass 'house' that will hold the hourgalss and allow for front and back viewing
5) make gourd caps to fit the top and bottom bulb and attach giant pincher fingers that will hold it stable and the whole affair it turned
6) make a center collar from gourd at the ceenter and position it onto a pivot that would swing the hourglass over

So, some options. Time to put experimentation to work!  Let's get crackin"!
CAM

Cat in Williamsburg

A discovery was made at the Heritage Commons retirement village in Williamsburg, VA. All of the residents' apartments have a wooden ledge outside their 'front door' where they can arrange seasonal decorations or otherwise make a welcome statement for their visitors.

Coming off the elevator to the 4th floor I was greeted by three cats, suspiciously gourd-like in their bottleneck gourd shape. Naturally I stepped closer and investigated.  Sure enough, these three cats were different sizes of painted bottleneck gourds.  The base paint was black, sponged ivory, and what appeared to be starched felt ears (or what was left of ears). This one on the table ledge was the mid-sized one. A big one sat on the floor under the ledge, and a miniature bottleneck cat hung on the door wreath.

The close-up shows some of the details: the broken stem, the mangle and missing ears, the interesting eye treatment, and the sponged face and belly. Very simply done, but dynamic. The initials on the bottom say BV or BJ--hard to tell due to scrapes and fading.

However! I am cracklin' with ideas about making my own cats-you can see the beginning of my gourd cats in an earlier post titled, Storage Solutions for Gourd Parts.

Keep Cracklin'!
CAM


Work on this project has taken several turns. First, there are many versions of cats in gourdland by many talented gourders. A quick image search in any search engine will locate cats, cats, cats! It is gratifying to see so many interpretations of the same subject....added proof that people can work with the same topic to produce different results. As I point out to my research students, why plagiarize when using individual talents results in a personal product?

However, a discovery I must share with you is Betty Finch - a remarkable gourd artist working with this natural product to make gourd people, animals, and pets. Her innovative use of gourds to mimic muscles, limbs, and postures is worth celebrating. Anything I say about her work pales against the cognitive skills she must have to recognize the proper gourd curvatures and dimensions to fit into the anatomy puzzles of her art. I have captured one of the pieces here,
Cat Lady, because it includes cats however I highly encourage a visit to the FinchGourd.com website.


I am cracklin' with inspiration!
CAM

Peeling Up the Past

My dear Crackled friends, life is busy and productive and exiting right now!  The gourd studio organization has yielded 23 woodburners!  Who knew?!  Well, I should have since it IS my house for gosh sakes! The continual drive to move on to the next great gourd idea has left piles of stuff in such confusion that when a woodburner was needed I'd just buy another one. Same with pliers, and screwdrivers! But, I offer some news to you that may be helpful at some point.

I had new overhead lights installed in the garage which brightened up the space like nobody's business. The different was striking!  However, the lights also made dark corners visible and what did I behold near one of the drill presses but that a quart can of paint had toppled over and dried solid on the floor, lid and all.

The beauty part of it was that since it was latex, so I could use a chisel to pick at an edge until it curled back. At that point I could grab a firm hold on the edge and peel the whole thing off the floor in one piece, lid and all.

So, the crackled lesson? There is the obvious conclusion that a garage should never get into such a state from the get-go. A more subtle, yet potentially vital conclusion, is that the best way to deal with spilled paint (even craft paints?) is to let the spill dry completely and then peel it up, especially if it sits on a nonporous surface.

Dolls or Seeds?

While looking up books on Amazon about black holes and peacocks (I know, I have eclectic interests!)(by the way, the newly released book, Strut, the Peacock and Beauty in Art, is going to be amazing!), I came across an item called Russian Doll Gourd Seeds. I was struck by the image and since I have always been enchanted by sets of Russian dolls, I just had to order...until I continued on the ordering path and realized WHOA! this wasn't about dolls at all, but about a package of 10 seeds. No mention was made that in order to get to the doll part a person would have to grow, dehydrate, clean, and THEN paint the gourds.

These are nothing more than miniature bottleneck gourds...and just seeds at that, even though the ad implies the dolls are the purchased item? I know, I know, read the small print always but a customer would have to know quite a bit of gourd culture and how-to to get from seed to dollie!

I like the dolls though, don't you? Makes me want to try them with some of my stash in the shed. MmMmmmmmm...I might be able to do a face, and perhaps some holiday images of holding a pumpkin, or tree ornament, or Easter egg.  Another project in the making!

Flip-Flop Dolls

Don't you just love fall? The air gets more comfortable and the time for tying up loose ends comes together. I have begun to order books for next spring and stow away baskets and signs from the local market.

I have also begun working on my flip-flop dolls...those amazing two in one dolls that flip over from one doll to reveal another: bride/groom, blonde/brunette, ballerina/football player. I have collected the gourds I want to use -- miniature bottleneck gourds with similarly shaped and sized head and belly. My own stash fell a little short this year, so I contacted another member of the Virginia Lovers' Gourd Society and luckily got another 20.

These dolls are in one of the books I've written, but having a step-by-step online tutorial has merit as well. I hope you try these for yourself!

Sharpees on Gourd Surfaces

Sharpees can be a quick way to put images on a gourd. I use them for ornaments and bowls when I want colorful calligraphy. There have been some lessons along the way however, and I am happy to share those with you.

This experiment and subsequent lesson has to do with polyurethane and Sharpee ink. First of all, let me tell you I am a BIG fan of Sharpee and use them over paint most of the time. However, there are two problems that arise: not all finishes will mix with Sharpee easily, and Sharpee ink fades over time.

In my experience Sharpee ink bleeds with Miniwax Polyurethane. Even if I use a brush and apply the thinnest coast possible so the ink won't run in drips, the brush becomes colored with the ink. Brushing over the existing brushed places just makes the ink ever-so-subtly blend over the background and image. The fix to that has been to use spray Poly lightly, let it dry, spray again, then brush. Many steps, but it works.

The other problem has been the fact a gourd will absorb the ink color over time. If used to fill in woodburning images, the colored part begins to look like little dabs of ink were applied here and there while most of the image was left plain. Only regular blue tends to stay more visible, but only in blobs.

Customers have brought back gourds with elaborate art on them that after years have faded to nothingness. A little time spent redo-ing the Sharpee on top of the finish brought the gourds back to life with happy results, even after another couple years.

To fix both of these problems, I have started to apply poly first (this works with spar varnish, polyurethane, acrylic, or floor polish--spraying or brushing, the application technique does not seem to matter), let dry and apply the Sharpee design on top of the sealant. The color stays true, is permanent, and has no fading.

The 12 year old back

The renewed back

An example of how Sharpee color fades on a gourd surface can be striking. This gourd angel is about 12 years old. You can see from the rear shot how faded the color had become. With new color, the original vibrant look is renewed. So, as a lesson in process: Put Sharpee colors on AFTER the initial coat of sealant. That keeps the color from soaking into the gourd and fading over time.

The renewed front

Hope this Crackin' Good lesson helps you!
CAM

Storage Solutions for Gourd Parts

Sometimes I get frustrated with the small pieces of gourds, tools, rim materials, and the other detritus that accumulates around the gourd studio. Not all of it is waste; some can be put to really good use if I can save it in an orderly way. Enter the multi-drawer storage unit used by woodworkers for nuts and bolts. I highly encourage use of these things. One drawer is collecting stems and miniature bottleneck gourd heads for the cats I make.

Drawers hold stems and gourd parts,
rim materials, glue sticks pins, nails,
picks, and lures....all the strange bits
and pieces of a gourder's artistic life.

Rubbermaid, 10 drawers. I bought
two of these several years
ago, and forgot them!

Stems serve as tails on the backs of these miniature
bottleneck gourd cats. Finished cats to come!