This project began as an experiment and practice piece in creating a large, roofed bird house gourd. I wanted to work out how to add a wooden roof before I began the cutting steps on my large kettle gourd. As I worked I became more and more delighted with the nest egg and small bottle gourd houses that I used as my practice pieces. Adding a few dried, natural accents was logical next step to change them from just experiments into Bee, Bug, and Seed Houses that I could use for my fall decorations and in my autumn flower gardens.
Have fun creating your own gourd art, miniature bird houses for your garden, autumn wreaths, and Christmas presents.
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Basic Construction of a Bee, Bug, or Seed Gourd House
As 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.
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.
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.
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.
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!!!)
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.
Stamp collecting is one of the top hobbies worldwide. As philatelists, we delight in little bits of art work that come from far away places, and that tell about a tiny bit of history, geography, social changes, or feature someone that has effected their country. The vast majority of the stamps that we collect cost less than a US quarter, yet bring hours and hours of fun as we track down complete year sets, special revenue issues, or even discover cancelled stamped envelopes from distant cities.
It is estimated that to have a complete worldwide collection you would have over 500,000 different stamps, from so many countries that Wikipedia has their own WikiProject just for collectors. Many of us focus on several favorite countries, or perhaps a topic or theme that is important to us.
Where you might specialize in butterflies, steam engine trains, or famous women in history, I personally search for stamps that feature maps, geology, and space endeavors. On one of my stamp collecting forums, Stamp Community Forum, one member noted that he collected stamps that feature men with mustaches.
Treasure Trove of Ideas
As wood carvers, pyrographers, and craft artists stamp collecting is a treasure trove of ideas, designs, and pattern work. Over the next few days I will be working on a pyrography pointillism project that features two Celtic birds, entwined in a Celtic knot pattern, inside of a traditional stamp frame.
Pointillism is the process of creating a design using only small dots. Small, widely spaced dots will create our pale tonal values; medium-sized dots, loosely packed give us the mid-tone values; and large, tightly packed dots will make our dark tonal value range.
Art Styles of Pyrography
To learn more about the different styles and patterns that can be used in your pyrography work please check out Lora Irish’s Art Style of Pyrography – 190 pages, 15 projects, Ready for Download, which we have placed on sale for those following our blog and this free project.
This is a quick, easy, beginner’s level free pyrography project that can quickly be personalized to include your name, a date, or a location. By the time we are done this project you will discover how you can create your own postage stamp designs by mix and matching topic patterns with stamp frames.
Supplies needed:
12″ x 12″- 1/4″ sheet of birch, poplar, or basswood plywood Wood burning unit – either one temperature or variable 220-grit sandpaper #2 to #4 soft pencil Painter’s tape or masking tape Red ball-point ink pen for tracing Loop tipped burning pen Ball tipped burning pen Ruler
So, while you get your supplies together, I am off to get our newest e-Project completed, which will, of course, focus on stamp collecting designs and ideas. See ya’ tomorrow with the free pattern to this project. – Lora
Click on the link above for your free download pattern pack.
Have you had that burning desire to create your own quilting batik wax stamps? Have you been looking for wallpaper border stencils? Do you need something special for this 4th of July scrapbook photos?
Well, we have what you want — and its absolutely free!
Our LSIrish July 4th Freebie Pattern Package includes 4 small quilt square motifs, 4 large quilt square motifs, and 3 star border motifs. Plus you will find fabric idea samples and a simple Nine Patch quilt layout for your personal use.
Hope you have fun with this one! And, please, email me through our contact page, above, with photos of what you have created.
