I Think Their Dogs ..... Well Maybe ??

Once in a while I see something and I decide that 

" Yes I Can Paint That " !  It opens up  my curiosity and creativity spot in my brain that says  "you Accept The Challenge " of trying to push myself beyond my comfort zone and to try New things !  This being one of them  !! I had never painted a animal before and I really wanted to try, If you don't try you will never know  and that's about how I leaned to paint in the first place. I never took a lesson, I leaned by watching videos. But these dogs on domino's I didn't have  a clue....

I had saw some domino's that someone had painted on ..Some were painted with beautiful little flowers and some had animals on them . Soooo I got on line and started looking for the best price on domino's & are there alot of domino's to look at and of course all different prices ...but the most important things about the domino's is they needed to have holes all the way through them so I could string them .

 I think I found them online at EBay they came in a bag of like 50 or 100 for a really good price ...just what I wanted  ! They come with a finish on them so you have to lightly sand them with some light grit sand paper, so the paint will adhere good to the domino's. .

See these have two holes drilled all the way through

A key chain ring

Then after I finished one I was so AMAZED that I really could paint a animal dogs to be exact ...I tried a cat and I bet out of the painted Domino's below you could pick out the CAT right away ...

 

Some of the Pet Domino's I put on key rings and some I put on a necklace but I actually think I like the Key Rings better

So just goes to show you that if you really want to do somethlng ....you really can ....Now I know that my hand painted dogs  don't look the best but these were all first tries ...HONEST...these were the first and only ones I have done so far  ... I have lots of domino's all sanded. and ready for painting Although I will have to put a hold on painting them for awhile because we have been Soooo Thankfully Busy with orders from our Etsy Shop for our gourd birdhouses ....

I hope this little post might have inspired you to GO AHEAD and Try IT !! YOU KNOW YOU CAN DO IT  !!

&

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My Nostalgic Romantic Lantern Addiction

Aren't these lanterns just gorgeous...I just fell in Love with them when I saw them and All sorts of painting ideas started running through my mind !!  Lanterns to me remind me ( especially all these Lanterns )  of the  "ROMANTIC PAST " .. You know ...Don't you ? 

We call this one the Bubble Gum Lantern

These are the little Lanterns 

The lanterns  are of all different sizes  and the glass in them are very unusual .The small ones above are about  8 inch's H x 14 in. round . I painted One large rose on each side of these with green leaves . All our Lanterns come with battery operated candles , the small ones of course come with tea light candles. These small ones we have listed in our Etsy Shop   www.etsy.com/shop/inmypaintedgarden.  

We absolutely Love  the one we call the bubble gum lantern all four sides have curved glass. On the bubble gum lantern the lid latches and when unlatched it flip open and you put the candle in from the top. On most of those I have hand painted three roses on all four sides. with some green leaves .

Morning Glory Lanterns

Here is a set of tall white Lanterns with sculpted design on all four side and the door opens in the front.We have hand painted purple morning glories with bright green leaves and vines. We have taken these and a few other Lanterns to Shabby Lane in Historic Nolensville Tennessee, where we have many of our other items that we make like our Birdhouse Gourds . 

Tropical Pink Flowers, Ferns &Butterflies

 These are just a few of the Lanterns that I have bought and painted so far . 

Small Purple Lanterns

Large Peach Rose Lantern Lit Up 

Large Peach Roses Lantern

Small Peach Rose Lantern

Small Peach Rose Lantern Lit Up

Large Pink Rose Lantern Lit Up

Large Pink Rose Lantern

The Small Purple & Pink Rose Lanterns

I sure hope that you think my Lanterns are kind of - Old Fashioned - Romantic and maybe Timeless. The kind of romantic beauty from the past ....Yea I know it;s just I think it would be nice to bring a little bit of the past to our home decor...

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The Hatchable Gourd Or So We Say ...

 Now this is different ....well maybe not but we are fixing to make our Pine cone Cottage birdhouse  in a totally different way ...at least try .  This is  why we are calling it our " Hatch able Gourd " you know kinda like well hatching an egg ??

 We just decided to cut one of our gourds in half,in a way that we thought we would be able to use for one of our birdhouses or pine cone roofed birdhouses.. So here you go ....I don't know how many of you have actually ever seen the inside  of a dried gourd ....so if not I will explain a little .....

On the inside of the gourd is a sack that is full of the gourd seeds. After the gourd is dry which could take anywhere from 6 month to a year depending on the size of the gourd. like egg gourds , martins or bushel the smaller they are the quicker they dry ! We leave them right out on the vine in the garden where they lay even after the vines are all dried up and  dead. After that they are usually all dried & in most, the the lining shrinks away from the sides and the seeds will shake around ( this is where the  Maraca it's little musical shakers come from)

This is what a gourd Maraca looks like 

Usually we clean out the gourds through the hole we put in the gourd to make the birdhouse and believe me it is a little time consuming  to be able to pull out All of the lining and the seeds ! Sometimes the seed sack inside the gourd doesn't pull away from the sides but that's not to much of a problem....the problem is when the seed sack dries up into the size of a softball and is hard as a baseball and you still have to get tat sack out if you want to use the gourd  especially if your using it as a birdhouse ! There have been times when just the gourd cleaning scrapper and the oversized hemostats or your fingers just won't work you have to pull out the big tools ,,,like a drill with a long drill bit on it to be able to drill at that seed sack ball little hits at a time until you get it to break apart ...that is if your steady enough not to drill through the gourd in other places by mistake...  

     Finally after all the lining with the sack of seeds is removed is when we can decide how we want to finish it . This is what we have done to this " hatch able " gourd so far  ! We ended up taking the top and layering it with pine cones ,now to finish off the bottom of the birds house lets see if we can come up with a Unique way of making this birdhouse a bird home !

      We hope you enjoyed this little blog post of the anatomy of a gourd...the first time I every decided to use gourds as my painting pallett it was so  ...cool that when we arrived at the farm, the farmer was so gracious to take us out in his fields on his 4 wheeler  ( there was still snow in the ground it was like April ) and educate us on the growing and harvesting of gourds. He even let us pick right out of the fields ..We had such a GREAT time that I/We havebeen hooked ever since and it's been about 18 years  .... Still LEARNING  but  having FUN ...

Would Love  to hear from you ..

Do you have a question about gourds or painting on them ?
How did you get started ?
Do you use gourds ?
Do you paint on gourds ?
Do you paint ?
What is your hobby ?

Please leave a Comment below


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Popping Pine Cones For English Cottage Gourd Birdhouses

It's time to get busy again pulling pine cone petals for " Our Pine Cone Roofed English Cottages ". It takes a lot of time and patience to do pine cone roofs .

It takes cutting them all to different sizes, your fingers and hands get ALL sticky from the sap on some of the pine cones and the pine cone petals . It will wash off after you wash them a few times but take note to plan on sticky fingers and  the glue sure doesn't help  with the fingers sticking together.

These have pointed tips 

You have to pull the petals all the way off the stem so you get the whole petal, Don't worry in the process you will break a lot of them  ( which means they would not have worked in the first place they were to thin ) Luckily we have trees with pine cones that for me work out pretty good. I would LOVE to get my hands on some of those big hearty pine cones. 

 A Closed Pine cone of course these won't work

After we pull all the petals off the pine cone we just fill up gallon size baggies, zip them shut for further use. It takes an amazing amount of pine cone petals to fill a gallon size bag, Also it takes many many to do one roof on our " Old English  Cottage  Pine Cone Roofed  " Gourd Birdhouses .

I always start off by painting the top of the gourd black where I think I want to start the roof. The reason for doing this is so of course none of the white will show through , You could actually paint it any color you may want too, I just prefer to use black or brown ,

This is what they look like when the roofs are done , of course I'm still doing the roof on the one on the far right. The two in the middle are base coated with the colors I am using for the birdhouses, one is a Slate Grey and the other is Itilain Sage.

Yes these are the finished birdhouses. you can see the Pine Cone Roofed Old English Greyatone Cottage Gourd Birdhouse here at Our Etsy Shop :  https://www.etsy.com/listing/493177808/unique-pinecone-roofed-old-english?ref=shop_home_feat_4 As you are reading this I am getting  to list the Itilian Sage Cottage Gourd Birdhouse .

 Of course We are NOT done with only these two ,,,,we have many more to come and a New way of making our Pine Cone roofs will be popping up in our Etsy Shop soon, So keep on checking back ,
We  would LOVE for you to give us some ideas on :

What colors shoud we paint some of the next birdhouses ?

Any other suggestions you might like to contribute ? We would Love some feed back ...

Thank You for stopping by . We sure hope you enjoyed reading what we LOVE to do  !

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