General Crafts

Bee Houses

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Basic Construction of a Bee, Bug, or Seed Gourd House

Free Bee and Bug Gourd House ProjectAs summer slips into those first cool days of autumn, it is time for me to prepare my flower gardens for the winter months ahead.  The gourd bird houses that I made last spring need to be cleaned and checked for needed repairs, the fallen leaves needed to be raked and moved to the compose pile, and its time to harvest the flower seeds for next year’s plantings.

This year I am adding a new little project to my autumn list – Bee Houses!  My region has lost most of its honey bee and other insect populations because of the intensive use of pesticides and herbicides.  More and more I depend on our native wild bee population to pollinate my gardens.   There are several excellent articles on the net for creating wild bee homes, that offer other, fun ideas that you can do along with this Nest Egg Gourd Bee House project.

The original idea behind this project was to make a few simple, quick bee and bug houses that I could place throughout my garden as winter nests – miniature bird houses.  I wanted them to be as biodegradable, eco-friendly as possible, so I chose to use some of my thinner shelled, small craft gourds and dried plant materials from my yard for accents.

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Gourd Bee Houses

DIY Bee and Bug Houses

Leave a Comment / Gourd Art / By

One of my many autumn projects for the blog is a series of roosting houses for our winter birds made from dried craft gourds and decorated with pyrography and colored pencils.  Along the way to the creating these kettle gourd houses I wanted to first play around with ideas on making different roof styles.  Most DIY birdhouses use the stem area of the gourd for both hanging and as the roof area, but I wanted something different.

DIY craft gourd bird houses

So I picked up some smaller dried craft gourds off of Ebay.com – nest egg gourds, small bottle gourds, and some dipper gourds.  Next I got out my bench knife, my boxes of craft supplies, my dried flowers and grass, and began experimenting.

I never meant to use these practice pieces here on my blog, but they were so fun to create and have so many possibilities that I just had to share them with you.  One of the little delights, shown below, is made with a nest egg gourd, approx. 2 1/2″ high by 1 3/4″ wide, with a corn husk roof, grapevine twist and barberry seed accents.

DIY Egg Gourd Christmas Decorations

I was only going to make one or two to figure how the easiest method of adding a roof to a gourd.  I ended us with over a dozen in just a couple of day’s play.  As I experimented with several different roof material ideas I also came up with a multitude of uses for these small gourd houses.

DIY Mini Nest Egg Gourd Bird Houses

Some of these miniature gourd birdhouses will become Christmas ornaments, some are made to go out into my garden as bee and bug houses, one became a little garden scene shelf decoration.  But my favorite so far is my larger, 4″ x 5″, seed house that will be my sister’s Christmas present.  Inside of this gourd, before I added the roof, I added 3 Red Oak trees, 5 Tulip Poplar trees, 6 White Dogwood trees, 6 Chinese False Dogwood trees, 6 Golden Chain trees, a huge bunch of marigolds, and 12 nest egg gourds – all viable seeds from my Maryland garden to her new Colorado home!  (Shhh! – Please don’t tell her!!!  It’s a surprise!!!)

DIY Gourd Birdhouse Project

So join me this week as I share the steps with you for making your own DIY Bee-Bug-Seed Houses for your Christmas tree and autumn gardens.  Then at the beginning of October we will start the pyrography roosting gourd houses with a free Lora S. Irish pattern.

Let your friends on FaceBook, Twitter, and Pintrest know so they can share the fun.

Lora ~

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Color Chart for LSIrish.com

Leave a Comment / Drawing and Painting / By

Mike A.,  Hooker green is equal to the phthalo green shown in the left column, second grouping.  A medium red-brown earthtone is equal to the venetian red, right column, third section!

Mike A. and his wood carving club are currently working as a group through our Canada Goose Relief Wood Carving Project – a great step-by-step project for any beginning wood carver.  He sent an email yesterday asking several questions on the paint colors used in this tutorial.  So, I am posting my favorite color chart guide here on our blog for Mike.

The chart is grouped into several areas for easy reference.

Left hand column, top shows the basic gray tones for neutral shading.  French gray tends towards a beige-gray or brown-gray coloring, and Paynes gray tends towards a glue-gray or gunmetal tone.  The second group shows the dark color tones used in colored pencil work for complimentary shading, where the compliment of the final color of an area is used to create the shadow tones.  The third section is my favorite graduated colorings for yellow.  The bottom group in the left hand column shows my skin tone colors.

In the right hand column, the top section shows my muted tone shading colors.  The remaining sections show my chosen graduated tones for pink, red, purple, blue, and green.

Every paint, pencil, and pastel company has their own unique names for their colors. I would recommend that you keep a copy of this painting guide on your computer.  You can print a copy, then write the manufacturer’s names of the paints you already own beside the matching color swatch.

To learn more about working with colors – hues, compliments, tones, and values – please visit our tutorial Who is R.G. Biv?  For working with watercolors for your pyrography projects, please see Watercolors and Wood Burning.  For more information on how to paint your wood carvings, you will want to take time reading our Painting Your Wood Carving tutorial.

Click on the color reference chart for a full-sized image.  Right hand click to save to your Desktop.

Lora Irish color chart

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free applique quilt pattern

Doodle Applique Quilting

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We have been working with doodle patterns in our wood burning and pyrography projects this last week.  Today, let’s see what happens when you bring those doodle designs to your favorite applique quilt project.

free applique quilt pattern

While I have stitched quite a few small applique quilting projects, I have finally started my first full-sized quilt work.  I wanted something fun, something easy, but something extra special since I know I will be working on the quilt top for some time.  I chose a classic, simple wildflower daisy pattern with long stems and lots of leaves over a four patch neutral toned block pattern.

free applique quilt pattern

To add that extra, I chose to get out my fine point permanent marking pen, a variety of tone-on-tone bright cotton fabrics, and the doodle patterns we have been using for our pyrography.  This is a great idea for the quilt top that has been lying around the sewing room because you just didn’t feel it had enough pizzazz to finish.

doodle_quilt_large

Wash and iron your fabric.  Click and save a copy of the free applique quilt pattern.  Trace a copy of each pattern piece onto the back of a piece of 220-grit sandpaper.  Pin or tack the fabric to a piece of foamboard.  Lay the sandpaper pattern pieces on the fabric and trace around the outer edge with a water-soluble pen, allow space between each pattern piece for seam allowances.

free applique quilt patternClick and save the full-sized pattern above – another free pattern by Lora S. Irish.

Now, using your permanent marking pen, have fun doodling patterns to the fabric.  I chose black for my designs, but also consider using multiple colors for pale toned or neutral fabrics.  When the doodling is done, remove the fabric from the foamboard and iron.  You are ready to move on to your favorite applique technique.  Fun, easy, creative, and a one of a kind show stopper.

For more doodle designs and doodle fill patterns, please see our New Pattern Package – Pyrography Doodles at Art Designs Studio.

Pyrography Doodles Pattern Pack by Lora Irish

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Wood Spirit Gourd Masks

Leave a Comment / Gourd Art / By

webimage-urbanlargeLet our patterns spark your imagination today!

It’s gourd and pumpkin carving season around the studio.  While cleaning up from one of my current gourd art projects, Basket Weaving, Braided Raffia Gourd Rims, I came across the leftover, cut-out section of gourd.  As a wood carver and pyrographer I often create and use practice boards in my teaching.  This small section of gourd seemed perfect for just that purpose.

Soon I had an acrylic under-painting with colored pencil wood spirit face worked up … but what to do with it.  The face painting came out so very well that I didn’t want to just ‘take a photo then throw it in a box for storage’.

Some hot glue, copper foil, electric wires, vintage and damaged jewelry pieces, some thick cotton yarn, and a pair of old glasses quickly turned a practice gourd scrap into an Urban Warrior Gourd Art Mask.

To learn how to make your own Urban Warrior Steampunk Mask please visit our newest free, online project, Wood Spirit Gourd Mask.

Both the Urban Steampunk Warrior Mask, shown, and the Wood Spirit Gourd Mask free project are worked from our Fun Wood Spirits pattern package ,available at ArtDesignsStudio.com.   While you are visiting our line art craft patterns website please note that our Halloween pattern packages have just been posted.

Halloween Scroll Saw 1 – 21 scroll saw ghouls, pumpkins, zombies, and more.
Halloween Scroll Saw 2 – 21 scroll saw cats, bats, rats, witches, ghosts and more.
Pumpkin and Fun Halloween Pattern Package – 71 fun designs for the very young Trick or Treaters.

When you get your’s done, please drop me an image through our Contact Me page.  I would love to start an Urban Warrior Mask gallery to share ideas.

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