Alas, poor Yorick, you’re just too dull!
I got this cheap Halloween skull in a supermarket so I could hack it into a Dia De Los Muertos calavera. Because I’m way more into colourful sugar skulls than the ghoulish variety. ;-)
This is really easy to do and I’m tempted to get a couple more skulls if they’re going cheap once Halloween is over. Because this was super fun to do. I didn’t do it in one go, it took me a few days and every day I was excited to know that I’d be spending time with paint in happy colours. :-)
I first gave it two covers of gesso – but you could use some cheap white paint if you don’t have gesso. Then I mixed white acrylic paint with a bit of water, to the consistency of buttermilk. You won’t need a lot of white acrylic, about a teaspoon’s worth.
Once the gesso and paint is dry, get out the colourful paints. Acrylics work best. If you have some nail polish that isn’t doing its job anymore, you can use some of that too. If it’s got glitter, even better!
Here I used glitter nail polish on the flowers that make up the eyes.
I think it’s just possible to tell that there’s glitter nail polish on the teeth?
And then you basically just go to town, channeling your inner Mexican. ;-) If you haven’t got one of those, have a look for inspiration on the internet. I used my Calavera Skull pattern as inspiration. For the face atleast.
For the back of the skull I just made it up as I went along. Adding a big heart and some marigold flowers.
