Some gourds I painted, others I left natural. Of the ones I painted, I found that light shades of blue, yellow or mauve worked best...and white. Especially if you use flowers with contrasting colors. Green did not work well unless you did blooms with no folage or made it very, very pale.

I would drill holes near the top to run a string through before adding the flowers, then string them through wire to put on the polyurathane. The only problem I had was some pooling around the wire as it dried. I nipped it off between coats and after removing the wire, smoothed it out and added another coat just at the holes.

They make great gifts!

Kay.