Pictured on the left is everyone's favorite 2hu Suika Ibuki (courtesy of Dairi), she's holding her iconic purple gourd.
In case you don't know, gourd bottles are a real thing people have and continue to use. The process of making one is fairly simple: dry it out for a while, cut and hollow it out, line the inside with wax, and you're basically done.
My Family having grown these at some point happened to have a pile of them collecting dust, so I figured I'd try recreating the Ibuki gourd to the best of my abilities.
.............................
And here it is!
(In retrospect it would have been a good idea to take step by step pictures, whoops)
I pretty happy with the result, there wasn't much to the creation process, after cleaning and cutting I filled the inside with coins to try and scrape off as much of the dryed flesh as possible, I then painted the outside and later spray painted on a layer of transparent purple to cover up the brush strokes a little, the seal is just a rubber wine bottle cap, and the rope a rope.
I'm most discontent with the talismans, they don't wrap too well on the small, curved surface. On them I've written "Ibuki" （伊吹） somewhat sloppily, and in strokes too thin. From what I know there isn't any official depiction of what's written on Suika's gourd, but many artist do the "Ibuki" thing, so it feels fitting. Also, despite trying I couldn't find any bee's wax to line the inside, thus actually using it as a bottle is unadvised.
Also also, Suika's is as round on the top as it is on the bottom, but gourds like that are rare to come by, so I had to make do with a shape that was closest, still, it turned out well I'd say.
