Dollar Store Skulls Tricked Out.

Katrina Warren
by Katrina Warren
$3.00
3 Hours
Easy

I decided to give myself a personal challenge of seeing what I could do to make the goofy looking skulls I saw at the Dollar Tree scary looking without going overboard on cost & picked a couple of them up to give it a try.

I didn't think to take a total before pic of the separate skulls, but I think you can tell what they looked like before the work started. I decided to conjoin the two skulls, so I first cut out the black space between the teeth on each skull, then I cut a section of the side of one skull away & hot glued them together.

Skulls glued together....

I smoothed out the glue a bit so the glue ridges wouldn't be so lumpy. Then started applying crinkled beige tissue paper to the skulls with mod podge doing the inner eye socket first.

Don't worry about all the wrinkles, when dried that will give it a creepy mummified effect. Continue applying tissue paper with mod podge until you have the face, top of skull & sides of skull covered. Let dry then continue putting tissue paper on the back & underside of the skull until entirely covered with tissue paper.

Once the tissue paper is completely dried, it's time to paint. You can choose any number of paint combinations, basing it all in black, then dry brushing over with a grey, & then a white for highlights would give you a concrete or stone look etc...... I chose to go with a dried up skin mummy look & used a light beige for my base coat.

Once the basecoat dried, I dry brushed over it with a golden brown, & then dusted over it again with a bit of dark brown for some shading.

Next dust in some black in the eye sockets, & nasal cavity. To blacken the inside of the mouth I squirted a bit of black inside then swished it around to cover the inner mouth area.

When your paint has dried, go over the entire skull with a clear spray coat for a bit of protection.

To give it just a bit more of a scare factor, I added a plastic spider to the top of the head, & one coming out of one of it's mouths, along with some stringy hot glue for webbing. I wanted the spiders to look more realistic & fuzzy so I lightly covered them with mod podge, & then gently pressed some black/grey dryer lint to them! LOL.... Hey, it worked!

Spider before & after fuzzing with dryer lint. (don't ask me why the linted one had extra legs, I don't know! LOL......) I also heated & shaped the legs & body a bit before linting to make it stand up on top of the skull as if ready to bite. Did you know if a tarantula raises the prosoma (front part of it's body) & front legs up that it is angry & preparing to bite?!!! If you happen to be holding one & it does that, put it down! No, I have not held one but my niece has!

See how the spider stands up? Happy Halloween!


DIY Halloween decor

For more creative Halloween decor projects, discover Hometalk's best  DIY skull and skeleton decoration ideas.
 

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