I am working on a new gourd and trying to finish it by Sunday so I can enter it in the up-coming Mother Lode Show (entries due next Monday). It's a concept I've had in mind for several months, and I found the perfect gourd for it on e-bay a few months ago, but only finally started it last week.
It's a somewhat elaborate construction. The gourd sits on a base made up of parts from other gourds. The base is a ring cut from the center of a gourd, then I cut several large petal shapes from yet other gourds and attached them around the top of the ring. They will be the lower rows of petals on a lotus flower. The inner row will be painted on the base of the main gourd. I'll have to upload a picture which will make the whole thing clearer.
Anyway, the problem was attaching the "petals" to the "ring." After much fretting and fussing, I finally decided to make supports of polymer clay for each petal and glue the petal to the support then the support to the ring with 2-part epoxy. It was a cumbersome and lengthy process which was not completely satisfactory. But Friday I found what looks to be a great product on Bonnie Gibson's arizonagourds site - a two part, air dry epoxy clay. It arrived in the mail today and I'm going to give it a try tomorrow. I'll fill the cracks and crannies left by the first process and hopefully it will work well. So, expect an update!