Dia de Muertos Crafting: DIY Sugar Skull

 

Or, as I almost titled  "This Man Stole My Skull!" 

Lemme explain. I made this as part of a gift planned for our local Mexican restaurant, owned by a family in our neighborhood, and from which we get takeout every Friday. When I showed it to Mr. Chocolate, he loved it, and as he has done a few times, he declared it was his, and then gave me a pouty face. So yes, I'm making another one, which works out because I can take some more in process pictures. Still...THIEF!

Supplies:

• Plastic Skull (Dollar Tree)
• Multi-Surface Acrylic Paint and Paint Pens
• Tissue Paper (Dollar Tree)
• Rhinestones
• Dimensional and/or Tacky Glue

For example, I didn't take a picture of my supplies. Ooops/ But this is one of the plastic skulls that Dollar Tree has every year. I painted it with multi-surface Apple Barrel Titanium White. I went over the cracks with a gold paint pen and punched two flowers from scrap paper, which I glued into the eye sockets. Then I added some resin flowers I had in my stash. 

I wanted to get the crown done first to use as a guide for the other elements. For these, I did simple paper flowers cut from tissue paper. Used a small bowl as a guide to trace my circles, then cut them out. I folded the tissue paper in fourths and used two sets of circles to make each flower.

Staple in the middle, then starting with the top layer, pull up and scrunch each layer into a flower. Glue in place using hot glue, dimensional glue, or as I did, Aleene's Clear Gel Tacky Glue. 

For the pink and yellow flowers shown, I used crepe paper streamers from Dollar Tree. I'll show how I made these when I do the next tutorial because, did I mention? Mr. Chocolate STOLE the first one?! 

Also not shown I went around the eyes, nose, and teeth with acrylic paint pens. 

I grabbed a bunch of self-adhesive rhinestones from my stash and then played with embellishing.

I just eyeballed and placed them as shown. 

NOTE: While the rhinestones are self-adhesive, just to be safe, I added dots of Glossy Accents dimensional glue to make extra sure! 

So now I'll be working on the replacement because again, I live with a thief!