Maple Leaf Arts and Crafts
66Maple Leaf Gourd Centerpiece
Make a pattern or a stencil.
If you aren't lucky to have any real maple leaves on your sidewalk or in your yard, go to your favorite search engine and type in maple leaf clip art or maple leaf patterns. Once you find one you like, save it to your computer and re-size it and print it out on your printer. Don't have a printer? Use your computer like a light box. Take a sheet of thin paper or tracing paper, put it over your monitor, and using a blunt pencil gently trace the design.
Now you can use it as a pattern to trace around, or a stencil.
Once you have a leaf pattern you like, you can stencil it on walls, wooden items, trays, mailboxes, drapes, flags, or banners.
Gourd close-up
Details
Make a Maple Leaf Bottle Gourd
Needed:
One medium cleaned hardshell bottle gourd
Acrylic paints in fall colors and green
Paint brushes
Gold or copper colored glitter.
Optional: Woodburning tool or Sharpie Marker
Cardboard or plastic to make a stencil/pattern
Clear acrylic spray
Pencil
Kneaded eraser
First decide how big your pattern should be by holding it up to your gourd.
Then trace around the leaf shape with the pencil. It may help to stick a loop of masking tape behind the stencil to help hold it in place. Go slow to allow for the curved surface and get the best tracing you can.
Adjust the design and erase stray marks.
Be sure to overlap a leaf or two to make it look more realistic.
Dip your brush into 2 colors at once and paint in the leaves. Paint some yellow, some orange and some brown.
After the paint dries, use a liner paint brush to paint in the veins of the leaves.
Let dry and then trace lines with glue bottle and sprinkle on glitter.
Paint vines with liner brush
Using woodburning tool or Sharpie marker, trace around each leaf being careful where the overlap is to make sure you trace the leaf that is supposed to be on top. Sign and date the bottom with your paint or marker or wood burning tool.
Let dry and then finish with clear acrylic spray.
If your gourd will stand alone, great. If not, use a vine wreath to set your gourd on.
Other Gourd Ideas
Great articles & Nice a site
wow that's amazing thanks for share, my aunt gave me one a few years ago, but I never put attention to it, until a few years ago that I made artesany and stuff like that, specially for tourist.
Thanks generic. I hope you enjoy doing some more gourd art soon.
I hope you have a nice day! Very good article, well written and very thought out. I am looking forward to reading more of your posts in the future
the handicrafts and the art culture that is displayed above above is really awesome and mind blowing.
My Almost Daily Craft Blog
- Happy Memorial Weekend
I feel mostly better today. I'm sad I missed all the big Memorial weekend events like Portrero and the Petaluma archery shoot. But I think I'm well enough to do art today. Thanks to all our vets past and present. You know who you are. Remember that peace should always be our first choice. But until everyone else makes that their choice, it's good to have a back up plan.
- A.C.E.O.'s for a Mere $1. Plus Postage
I think I just about have this cold whipped. I'm planning on making some ACEO's (Art Cards Editions and Originals). In the hopes of getting lots of my art out there and making it affordable for anyone to have original art, I'm dropping the price of each miniature art creation to $1 for the card and $1. for shipping and handling. These aren't prints. They are mini drawings, paintings, or collages. In the past I've sold these from $8 to $20 per card. But I could never find steady buyers. I'm thinking of making a million $1.00 ACEOs. Of course if you want to buy 100 of them, I'm not going to charge you $100 for shipping. LOL. I'm sure I can do combined shipping. If you do buy A.C.E.O.'s from me or anyone else, read the descriptions carefully. Make sure you know if you are getting a print or an original. And a print (as made on a copy machine or computer printer) is not considered an original piece of art, whereas a linoleum block print or a letterpress print or a Gocco print is an original work of art. If the artist is applying ink to a surface, then pulling prints one by one those are considered originals and are often numbered like 1/100 (one of one hundred). I haven't started the new ACEO's yet, but here are some I've done in the past. Remember, if it's not 2 1/2" x 3 1/2" it's not an A.C.E.O. If this is all new to you, I wrote an article on it here: Designing and Collecting Art Cards.
- Used Tool Swap Meet
The weekend was kind of a bust as I managed to get sick and missed the archery event. I stayed home and read A Cast-Off Coven by Juliet Blackwell instead. I want to finish that one before I start reading the Hunger Games. I did go to a used tool swap meet on Sat. We had to get up at 5 AM to be in LA as soon as possible. My boyfriend got five or six draw knives, some calipers and some odds and ends. There was one vendor selling old rusty tools for $1 each would have been great for assemblages and restaurant decor.
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Susan love-to-paint Haney 4 years ago
Moonmaiden, I loved your ideas and maple leaf designs. They are beautiful. I will have to try these. I've never painted a gourd before. And I never thought of using mycomputer screen as a light board. What wonderful ideas you have.