On the other end of my phone one day was a very sweet lady artist who wanted to know how to use silk dyes to paint gourds! Huh?

Dar said she just loved the brilliance of silk dye and her current favorite “canvas” happened to be dried gourds. Could it happen?

If you’ve had any experience with silk dye, you know that it is a wild thing - prone to running in all directions when used on silk or on paper. In fact, in most cases, it has to be “dammed” with a resist.

So, the mental picture of silk dye on the slick surface of a gourd was an interesting one indeed! We do believe that anything is possible around here, however, so I made a few suggestions and Dar went off to experiment. Her results are stunning, as you will see.

Did You Guess Correctly?
If you guessed the ingredients of our cover picture to be silk dyes, gesso, silk salt, varnishes, fibers, absorbant ground, and a gourd, then you are a psychic genius and should get a reward of some kind (we’ll try to think of one).

What if You’re Not Interested In Gourds?
Don’t be so quick to skip over this article - even if painting a gourd is the last thing you ever dreamed of doing. The procedures here can be used to bring the sparkling brilliance of silk dyes to any surface - a box, a book cover - etc. Possibilities are endless.

The Mixed Media Mind
After our phone conversation, I visited Dar’s website to see what else she had been up to. It was an adventure worth having, and made me smile as I recognized that creative “explosion” that happens with the discovery of each new medium and its vast possibilities. It’s fun to follow Dar’s path and many of you may recognize a familiar journey. Here is a link to her story: http://www.afamilyjournal.com