Quick post this morning.  I purchased this large dried gourd at a flea market for 75 cents, about 2 years ago.  Yep that’s right, it’s been hanging around in my stamp room for 2 years, lol.  My husband put a not so perfect hole in the front of it and drilled some small holes in the bottom for drainage and small holes in the top of the neck so I can run some twine through to hang it. 

This gourd is very blemished, even after sanding it with Sandpaper, so I decided to make it very rustic looking.   

No tutorial today since this was pretty much straight stamping.  I used Black Stazon ink to stamp the images. 

The images are by Innovative Stamp Creations :

http://www.innovativestampcreations.com/ischomepage.html

Since I was using unmounted stamps, I could using them without any mount and wrap the rubber around the gourd to stamp it.  I held the stamp in my hand, inked it and then pressed it to the gourd.   Where the images didn’t stamp as dark as I would like I colored them using a Black Faber-Castell marker.  The flower was colored in with a Brown Faber-Castell marker.  These markers are nice.  They are Indian ink and very fade resistant.

After stamping and coloring I finished it by spraying Clear High Gloss Polyurethane on it for protection.  My husband woke up this morning, saying what is that smell, lol.  Don’t worry folks I took it out side to spray it, but brought it in the house to dry.

It’s not the fanciest birdhouse ever created, but I like it’s rustic charm.  🙂  Hopefully some bird family will enjoy it too.

Hope your day is filled with peace and sunshine.

Until my next post. . . . . . . . .

Michelle