Since a dried gourd can be crafted like a piece of wood, it offers a wonderful medium to be crafted in a multitude of ways. Probably the easiest way to craft a gourd when you’re getting started is to paint them! We are always in awe at the creativity displayed through gourd painting. Many paintings go beyond “crafts” and enter the world of fine art.

A couple hints:
-Acrylic paints or oil paints will work on your gourd
- No need to seal or sand the gourd before painting it
- Let your imagination run wild!!

Here are a few examples of painted gourds that we just love! Use them as inspiration for your own gourd painting projects:

Gourd Art by Bonnie Gibson. arizonagourds.com

So bright and beautiful! (image courtesy of Coconut Grove Grapevine.)

Our very own Dorris Risser's Folk Art Cat Gourd (one of Meadowbrooke Gourd's past painting classes)

Morning Glory and Ladybug gourd painting class

Just adorable! by Aurelia Conway in the book "Great Garden Gourds Book"

Meadowbrooke Gourds offers painting classes throughout the year at our farm in Carlisle, PA. Experience painting gourds with the help of a professional artist! Check our website for upcoming classes. 

We hope everyone had a fantastic Fourth of July Weekend!! We are sailing into July with our new Sailboat gourd. It is natural in color with a sailboat cut -out. It is approximately 5 inches in diameter and comes with an electric light. This makes the perfect compliment to last month’s Baby Whale Gourd. Whether you are decorating a beach house, bathroom or a nautical-themed room, this sailboat gourd is a must! We hope you enjoy our July product of the month.

Click the photo to purchase!

We are considering a new class this month at Meadowbrooke Gourds! It would be a Create-Your-Own Cat Class during our Spring Fling to be held on April 30th. Below is a photo of the two sizes and 5 colors you would be able to choose from. We would love to hear from you if you would be interested in this class!

We don’t know about you, but at Meadowbrooke Gourds we are on to thinking about spring! During these dreary, snowy winter days, cheer yourself up by thinking of warm weather and spring blossoms! Here are some of our new gourds available online now.

(Stay tuned…we will be taking you behind the scenes of our production area to show you the crafting process of our new spring products!)

This chick has a yellow top with a white egg shell bottom. The top comes off like a lid so you can fill it with treats for Easter. Approximately 5" in diameter.

Our new grey Kourtney bunny collection has a white belly and a bright colored bow. The Large Lit, Medium Tall Lit and Large Tall Lit come with an electric light.

A close up of the medium tall Kourtney bunny!

Two nights ago Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe held their holiday special and our Meadowbrooke Gourds episode was part of it!!

If you missed it, click here for a clip.

Photo from the clip

Roger our Washroom Manager (we featured him in a previous post!) with Mike Rowe

With Halloween just around the corner and trick or treating in Carlisle, PA happening tonight (Thursday evening), we thought it would be fun to include a little trick or treating history for you!  Trick or Treating is actually a long and honored tradition dating back thousands of years.

forumgarden.com

Well, the antecedent to it did.  During times of famine, disease, and such, people often wore masks to frighten off the evil spirits they believed responsible for these disasters.  Samhain (Sow-en), you may recall from an earlier post, is where our modern Halloween comes from. It celebrates the abundant harvest, and signals the end of the growing time. That also meant colder weather was approaching. Well, ghosts being cold by nature, would do their best to trick people into letting them get closer to the fires. So, people were very careful to wear masks in that season.

The custom of trick of treating began with 19^th century souling. On All Souls Day,November 2^nd, early Christian beggars would walk through the neighborhood, begging soul cakes. A soul cake received was a promise to pray for the dead, and so each one represented a soul released from Purgatory.  Fast forward to around the 18^th century, and the beggars become children and the treats become nuts, fruits, and buns. Fast forward a little more and the candy companies get into the act and thus the beginnings of what we see now.

We’ll post a recipe for Soul Cakes soon!  Enjoy Trick or Treating tonight and be sure to stay safe. Here are some Trick or Treating safety tips for you.

Thank you to everyone that came out to our Create Your Own Jack O’Lantern events the past two weekends! We had a great time and hope you did too. We certainly saw some fun and creative designs and look forward to choosing the finalists for our contest! One of these gourds will appear in our upcoming catalog and that winner will be announced before the auction on the last day of our Fall Open House this coming Saturday, October 23rd.  We will keep you posted with the finalist photos on here or you can join our Fan Page on Facebook to stay up-to-date.

Here is the process of creating your own Jack O’Lantern in photos and a video! If you missed this one, don’t worry,  we hold other events like this throughout the year !

Shawn talks you through getting started and you select a gourd to become your masterpiece! Some gourds have "lids" or you can decide to get wire handles put on your gourd to make a basket. The second and third tiers are eligible to enter into the contest.

Take a seat at one of the crafting tables

This big gourd is known around here as the "Jack Shaq." Behind the Jack Shaq is where we cut out your one-of-a-kind gourd. (We'll be going back there to show you what happens!)

Choose the side you would like the Jack O Lantern's face to be on.

We provide stencils for the mouth, nose, and eyes or you can choose to draw a design on your gourd freehand. We wanted to practice first by drawing out an idea on paper.

Time to draw it on the gourd with the white pencils that are provided.

Don't worry if you mess up, there are wipes on the tables that will take the pencil right off!

All done drawing! The "x" will be cut into a star!

One of our crafters, Steve, cutting out the drawing in the Jack Shaq!

See Steve in action cutting out the gourd!

And the finished gourd all lit up. This Jack O'Lantern will last for years and years to come...

Kristen from the Cumberland Valley PA blog wrote a great post about our farm tours here at Meadowbrooke Gourds!

We wanted to repeat her post for you to give an idea of the process to create our finished products:

Meadowbrooke Gourds’ Tour is Worth the Trip

Our black cat, Raven

Just other day I finally had the chance to take the tour of Meadowbrooke Gourds. I hear about this place all the time and always wanted to check it out. It was really cool and the tour guide was very informative. You start out in the gift shop which is neat to start a tour by seeing what the finished product can look like. You then go back to see where the gourds are placed after they are picked and cleaned. They are put in a huge circle washer to get all the dirt off and make them smooth. After they go through the washer someone sands them down to make them perfectly smooth and attaches stems if they fall off.
Then they are taken to a crafting room. Where they are painted and turned into, on this day, cute little black cats for the upcoming Halloween season. Someone was making the face for the cat, others were painting them black and one person was making little felt scarves for them to wear. It was also fun to hear that the people who work there get to come up with the ideas for the next featured gourd. They all make one and then the team votes on it. I wouldn’t highly recommend taking the tour but more than that visit on a day where you can create a gourd… if it’s good enough you may find it in their next catalog!

Read the original post and visit the Cumberland Valley PA blog here.

Public tours of our gourd plant will be held during our fall open houses on Friday, October 22nd 10:00 am – 7:00 pm and Saturday, October 23rd 10:00 am – 4:00 pm. We will also be giving wagon rides and holding our “Thank You Sale.” We hope to see you soon!

Open House

Hey there, everybody.  We just want to remind you about all the fun activities going on at Meadowbrooke Gourds during our Open House all during the month of October.  Every weekend has something for everyone and great family adventures.  First of all, throughout the month, weekdays as well as weekends, you can pick your own pumpkin and ornamental gourds.  These can make beautiful centerpieces and other decorations for the season.  Read all about our pumpkin patch in this previous post.

But get there early. They go fast!

Starting tomorrow – Oct. 1^st & 2^nd – is our much anticipated Oops! Sale.  You’ll get fantastic discounts on our beautiful gourds that have minor flaws and defects. (Many flaws you won’t even be able to tell, but they didn’t make our standards to be on the shelf.)  This weekend and the 30^th we have Gourd Painting classes as well!

Our Own Jack-o'-Edgar

Discover the artist in you on the second and third weekends – Oct. 8^th & 9^th and Oct. 15^th & 16^th – when you draw a design and we carve that exact drawing on a gourd to create your own unique Jack-o’-Lantern.  And here’s something special: At least one of the best of these will be featured in our 2011 catalog!  Your design may be sold nation-wide!

October 22^nd & 23^rd we will offer tours of or farm, Wagon Rides, and a special Customer Appreciation Sale.  You’ll get 25% off anything in our retail store.  Perhaps best of all is the bonfire on Saturday evening, featuring live music, an auction, and FREE hotdogs and soda.  Download the flier so you know what’s going on when. We’ll remind you, too, as each weekend approaches. If you’re not already a member of our Facebook Fan Page, we will be updating with pictures from our open house events! We are also running a Facebook contest throughout the month of October.

We hope to see you this weekend!