A Dia de los Muertos Celebration... by Maria Soto

Hi there, today I want to share some fun jewelry items I made to help celebrate the Day of the Dead (Dia de los Muertos). Dia de los Muertos originated in Mexico. On this day the dead are honored with festivals and lively celebrations, it is also celebrated on All Saints Day and All Souls Day – minor holidays in the Catholic calendar.

As I remember, it was believed that the dead would be insulted by mourning or sadness, this holiday celebrates the lives of the deceased with food, drink, parties and activities the dead enjoyed in life. I remember all the fun activities we did as kids living in Mexico, all the sugar skulls with names on them, special foods, and games.

I thought I would make some skulls, this is the most familiar symbol of Dia de los Muertos, but instead of making them out of sugar, I made them out of Amazing Casting Resin.

I went shopping for decorations at Party City and found this cute skull ring that lights up, it's going to be fun wearing it, then I thought it would make a nice mold using the Amazing Mold Putty and then it came to me, I needed to make some "claberas" (skulls) to give away for the Dia de los Muertos.

 

Using Amazing Mold Putty is so easy, all you need to do is take equal amounts of putty from part "A" and part "B", mix it until you have one solid yellow color, and it's ready for the item you want to mold. I pressed my skull ring into the putty to create a mold that I will use to make my resin skulls.

I actually made three molds of this skull, since I was planning on making several, and I wanted to get them done fast. Making a bunch of resin skulls only took me about three hours – the Amazing Casting Resin cures in about 10 - 15 minutes depending on the temperature (CLICK HERE to see mixing instructions). I got lucky because we have pretty nice weather right now. However, painting and embellishing all these skulls took me all week... and I stayed up until 4am several days this week. I guess if I add up the hours I slept this week I would have to say I slept less than 8 hours, but I was having too much fun and I needed to get these done as fast as possible.

The skull to the left is resin, and the one on the right is painted with white acrylic paint. I added jump rings on the back of the skulls before the resin cured... which is better then gluing them on after.

Here you can see all the painting that took place. I thought about using markers, but I love painting – so I took some really thin brushes, lots of acrylic paints and painted each one, trying to make each one unique.

I had purchased some Halloween scarves at the dollar store and some twine at Michael's, which I cut to make some long cords to turn these resin skulls into long necklaces. I forgot to add a jump ring to one of the skulls so I made it into a pin.

These were so much fun to make! I will be making a lot more... some I will be selling at an art fair this weekend; and the rest I will be giving away at our Halloween party to my family and friends. These are several of the necklaces I made.

I added the words "amor" and "love" instead of adding a person's name – which is what you usually do to remember a special someone that passed away and for whom you celebrate on this special Day of the Dead.

Here you can see the mold, the original skull ring and the resin skull pin I made.

I hope that you enjoyed this post and that I have inspired you to take these Amazing products and create your own Holiday gifts. Please share your creations with us.

How do you decorate for special holidays?

Thanks for visiting! I invite you to stop over to my blog, "What is Creativity" at http://chuy-creativity.blogspot.com to see more of my creations. ~ Maria Soto

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