Gaara Gourd Tutorial

Okay, I recently made a Gaara gourd and it turned out pretty good so I’m making a Tutorial.

Supplies you’ll need: two balls (one slightly smaller then the other), duct tape, newspaper, paper mache paste, table cloth, clay (or pipe cleaners), tan, sandy yellow and black paint, cork board (or pop bottle & tape), and a hot glue gun.

First, duct tape the two balls, one smaller and one larger, together. Tape the balls together with the duct tape. To test the strength drop the balls from waist level.
Put down your table cloth. Prepare paper mache with one part flour and two parts water for a bowl of paste. Cut newspaper into ribbons, lots of newspaper. Put at least three layers of paper mache on the balloon, giving sufficient time for each layer to dry before applying the next otherwise your going to have soggy paper mache. This is dirty, wear raggy clothes.
Once I had all the layers on it I noticed that the middle where the balls connected were really close and needed to be thickened out. I rolled up strips of newspaper and mached them around the middle.
I then spread strips over the rolled up strips to make it more smooth. Once it’s dry it will be a little bumpy and wrinkly no matter what you do.	NO PICTURE
There are two ways to make the little circle around the cork on top of the gourd. Always measure this to fit your cork before completing. My first experiment involved twining pipe cleaners around each other till I got them at the desired thickness. I then wrapped these in paper mache. This method was way too bumpy for my liking so I discarded it and used clay instead (but for those of you who don’t have clay this could work too.	PIPE CLEANERS CLAY
I also used two methods for the cork. If you have cork board that’s the better option. I cut out a rectangle of cork board, curled it into a tube and hot glued it closed. I then glued the tube down on another square of cork board and cut the around the tube to give it a top. The other method I tried was I cut up a pop bottle, made a tube then put some strips of mached newspaper over top. This will work if you don’t have cork board.	POPCAN CORK BOARD
Time to paint! Take your tan paint and completely cover the gourd. Pencil in some cracks the run over them in black paint with a thin brush. Pencil on the rectangular markings. Generally there's on two on the top and two on the bottom corresponding with each other. This is probably the hardest part to do. Now paint the rectangle sandy yellow with a black border before penciling in the Ms and Ws. The Ms and Ws go opposite, as in if the last mark on the top ball is an M the last one on the bottom is going to be a W.	MAIN BODY CRACKS FULL PAINT
Take your circle of clay or paper mache and put it where you want it to go on the top of the gourd. Trace the inner circle with a pencil. After that quickly apply the hot glue to the bottom of the circle then stick it to the traced circle. Hold for about ten seconds before letting go. If you traced wrong or didn’t bother but now it’s lopsided just take a knife and pop it off. Retrace, reglue.	WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE IF THE GLUE DRIES TO QUICKLY
By this point all you might have to do is touch up the painting and if you want to protect the paint layer varathane it. You’re already to Cosplay with your new Gaara gourd!