Getting your Gourd Clean and Craft Ready

I hope you have a dried gourd that is ready for you to start to craft with, but before we can begin it is important to clean your gourd.  As stated before, the gourd is quite ugly and in fact looks rotten when it is dried but we will be uncovering the beauty hiding beneath that ugly facade.  If you buy your gourds, many are available that are pre-cleaned and ready to go.  If you grow your own, you will need the following items as basic cleaning tools, bucket (large enough to put the gourd in) a wool scouring  pad, bleach, a small paring knife for scraping and rubber gloves to protect your hands from the steel wool. 
On a beautiful fall day, take your cleaning supplies outside as it is the best place to clean the exterior of your gourd and gives you plenty of fresh air!  Pour water into your bucket about half full, put about 1/4 cup bleach into the water.  The bleach will kill the mold spores on the gourd. Now, go ahead and plop your gourd into the water; it will float.  Some people like to place a weight ontop of the gourd to hold it underwater.  This is tricky and somewhat difficult to do unless you have a plate or a piece of wood smaller that the circumference of your bucket. You will also need something that provides enough weight to offset the natural buoyancy of the gourd.  I usually just give the gourd about a half hour soak and during this time spin it so that all sides get wet and soften the yuck. This will do for cleaning most gourds.  After the soak, put on your gloves and grab that scouring pad and go to it; scrub it, dunk it and scrub some more until all of the skin has been removed.  You may need the paring knife to scrape the stubborn spots or when cleaning tight spots near the stem or in tight curved areas.  If your gourd has a stem, do not remove it but you may need to lightly scrape it clean. 
Some gourds have a very stubborn waxy skin that seems to repel the water and refuses to soften.  In cases like this, I use the paring knife to scrape some of the waxy skin off in vertical strips as this allows the water to get underneath and soften the rest.  It will require additional soaking and scrubbing to get this completely cleaned off.
When you are done, you should see the smooth brown surface of the gourd which may have some darker spots due to the mold pattern created while your gourd was drying.  Some of these patterns can be quite beautiful and you may want to accentuate it when you do your crafting.  It may also have some blemishes from some bug that tried to get into the gourd and only left his mark....these also just add character. Now just leave your gourd outside on a table or bench to air dry.
Some crafters insist on further cleaning the gourd by lightly sanding the surface to take off bumps and blemishes, but this is not necessary.  These things are natural and only give character to your gourd as well as possibly being instrumental in lending interest to your creative process.
If you grew your own gourds, you will have a few or many, but it is best to clean the whole batch at one time so that they are ready for you when the inspiration hits you!  So get outside, enjoy the fresh air and the outdoors and get those gourds clean and ready for the fun to come.  Check back next week as I will be talking about ideas and inspiration! 

Here is one of my favorite links for some "audio" gourd inspiration......Gourds have a wide variety of uses.........I have attached a pic of my first gourd purse : )   Enjoy!             http://www.gourdorchestra.com

Front view

Inside/lined with mulberry paper

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