Three little Trinket Boxes made from Gourds and the help of Proxxon Tools

My Proxxon Tools helped me to make three wonderful trinket boxes this week and I went crazy with all of my new Plaid Paints and Mod Podge and my new shipment of Creative Paperclay !  I just love all three of these products and can't say enough good things about them.

Supplies needed for this project:

1 or more gourds ( I made three)
Proxxon Jig Saw
Proxxon Drill
Proxxon Rotary Tool
Plaid Products and Paints
  Mod Podge and Mod Podge Glitter
  Watercolor Acrylics - Pastel Orange, Pink Dahlia, Turquoise, Meyer Lemon
  Brushed Metals -  Brushed - Black, Pale Silver, Antique Gold, Pearl Gold
  Coastal Paints - High Tide
  Color Shift -  Orange Flash, Green Flash
  Martha Stewart Paints - Lake Fog/satin
  Home Decor -  Chalk Vintage Mustard
  Outdoor -  Red Hot

Plain White Acrylic
Three sets of hinges
Head Pins
Assorted Beads 
Assorted Paint Brushes
Assorted Napkins and Tissue Paper
Creative Paper Clay
Assorted Molds for the clay

I had such a fun time making these trinket boxes!

I started out by choosing three gourds out of four and then

I used the Proxxon Jig Saw and cut them in half. Once that was done I used my Proxxon Rotary Tool with a small cleaning ball on it to help with the final cleaning on the inside of the gourds and then sanded the insides smooth by hand.

The next part of the fun came when I used my Mod Podge to put down some napkins and tissue paper (the green one) to cover the inside of the gourds. I then gave a light coat of the Mod Podge Mega Glitter to the insides.

Looks a little rough here but I let the gourds set overnight to completely dry.

Once dry I trimmed up all the decoupage and painted the outsides of the gourds with the Plaid paints shown in the picture above.

This is how the gourds looked after the Plaid paints were dry and the hinges were attached.

Here's some fun that you don't want to miss! I used my Creative Paperclay and molds that I had to create embellishments to glue to the gourds. I made flowers, seashells and a seahorse and also butterflies and a dragonfly to embellish each of the gourds with. I popped the pieces out of the molds while they were still wet and glued them to the appropriate gourd, let them dry and then painted them using all of the various Plaid paints listed above. I also took the Plaid Glitterific and went over the seashells, seahorse, butterflies and dragonfly I used beads on a string to go around the butterfly gourd and the rest of the beads and head pins to make little handles to open the gourd trinket boxes with. I used my Proxxon Drill to make tiny starter holes to put the head pins and beads onto the gourds.

These are the finished gourd trinket boxes.

Here's a picture of them opened.

And here's one with them closed. These boxes were kind of time consuming, but that was because I made three of them. This project was a lot of fun and I got to use several different products, and several different techniques. I hope you enjoyed the tutorial and that you try making some yourself. Please leave me a comment below and let me know what you thought of this project and take the time to go to the different websites to check out these awesome products........www.proxxon.com, www.plaidonline.com, and www.creativepaperclay.com  You will undoubtedly find something you just can't live without!

Barbara