How To Make A Wooden Animal Skull
Shaddie has countless years of experience dealing with all manner of creatures great and small.
Decorative Animal Skull Ideas
Do you accept a bunch of dusty, unsightly skulls laying around, or maybe a fractional skull, or a os or two? Have yous ever wondered if there was anything artistic that you could practice with them? Well, the reply is yes! There are multitudes of dissimilar projects you can do with animal bones and skulls, including but not limited to jewelry, artwork, and home ornament!
While I dearest the look of a cleaned, whitened skull, some skulls are damaged or discolored, and may not expect nice in their natural state. These kinds of skulls can be "gussied upwards" so to speak, by adding various mediums to cover their flaws and accentuate their beauty. Every bit a skull and bone collector, I am pleased to present to you some of my favorite things to practise with skulls and bones.
10 Means to Turn Animal Skulls and Antlers Into Art
- Jewelry
- Acrylic Pigment
- Alcohol Ink
- Metalizing
- Carvings
- Pyrography
- Decoupage
- Bejeweling
- Painted Antlers
- Miscellaneous
1. Jewelry
People utilise skulls and basic to brand jewelry of all sorts, from necklaces, earrings, and bracelets, to clasps, headdresses, and hair fascinators!
Jewelry making can be as simple or as intricate as y'all wish, but information technology is fairly easy to start out by following a jewelry-making volume, or by looking upwards ideas online.
Bone jewelry is likewise in high need, and so it is entirely possible that y'all may exist able to outset your own Etsy shop to sell your wares. Items such as mandibles, pocket-sized skulls (birds, rodents, etc), long bones (from the legs or arms of small animals), and vertebrae are unique, fairly lightweight, and attractive in appearance, odd though they may exist.
Past using simple chains, loops, earring attachments, and wire, you can transform even the well-nigh useless of bones into wear works of fine art. These items sell speedily because they are unique, handmade, all-natural, and strangely pretty.
2. Acrylic Paint
This is one of the best means to cover up a skull that has been damaged or discolored. By painting over the skull, whatsoever blemishes on the bone will exist null merely a distant memory.
Mechanical injuries such as holes in the cranium, missing teeth, or various other marrs, can exist "fixed" by fashioning appropriate pieces out of Sculpey or modeling clay. Cover holes up by smoothing bits of dirt over the holes. Teeth tin can be made simply plenty by using other teeth as a reference, and it doesn't need to exist perfect either. Nobody will notice any minor mistakes one time the paint is over the whole thing!
Painting skulls is elementary, enjoyable, and has the added effect of making a skull seem more than cute than information technology would be if it were just plain white. Whatsoever paint tin technically be used, to varying degrees of success, but acrylic is cheap and elementary to understand.
Showtime every bit y'all would with a regular canvas by wetting the skull with your paintbrush or painting over information technology first with diluted white paint. So, paint your idea onto the skull. Some people like to utilise natural colors to give the skull an almost Native American feel, while other people like to paint using bright, vibrant colors. Some artists draw unproblematic designs of stripes, dots, or respective lines, while others paint entire landscapes onto their skulls.
Information technology tin can help improve the flawless await of your painted skull if you remove the teeth earlier you start painting, and then, once the skull is painted, pigment the teeth of the skull separately and insert them into their respective sockets once fully dried. This allows you to cleanly paint the teeth a different colour from the residue of the skull, should yous then desire.
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Once your skull is completed, terminate it off with an art-quality lacquer of your choosing. Matte or gloss sealants of diverse brands are designed specifically for acrylic pigment projects to provide lasting colour and accentuate vibrancy.
3. Alcohol Ink
Booze ink is an amazingly interesting medium that is used to create a beautiful stony finish on shine surface materials. With a wide range of brilliant colors, alcohol inks collaborate before your very eyes to create swirls, flashes, and unusual patterns that cannot exist achieved through other mediums.
Alcohol ink is fun and vibrant but can exist extremely messy. It will non come up out of every surface it touches, and tin can stain your hands for weeks. Always wear gloves to keep it off of your skin, and ever place a thick layer of paper or plastic under any you are inking. Having said all that, it is a wonderfully rewarding medium to work with, and with so many color choices available, the option of different combinations ensures that no two projects are exactly akin. For more than information on how to properly use alcohol ink, visit this website.
Metalized skulls are downright cool and produce a finish unlike ones institute on painted skulls. To metalize a skull, the whole skull is dipped into a cold metal/polymer folder mixture. This polymer folder reacts with metallic, forming a metallic blended and allowing all of the skull's features to be displayed accurately and seamlessly. The finished coat will tarnish with age, only like regular metal (later all, the coating is nearly pure metallic!) On top of this, many metalized skulls are covered with special patinas that protect the quality and expect of the metal itself.
This procedure is offered by some skull collection companies and professional person taxidermy operations (such equally Metalized Skulls, Skull Taxidermy, and Montana Skullworks) for a toll, but it is certainly well worth the money.
5. Carvings
Skull carvings are fascinating and unique, mystifying nearly anyone who looks upon them. They are true works of art, and those who create them can spend weeks upon weeks on just one pocket-size project. The bone carving craft is meticulous, intricate, delicate, and requires special tools and experienced hands.
Some artists carve holes into skulls to create a visually stunning array of latticework within the bone, while others are content to compose outlines and pockmarks in bone, sometimes even going over them with ink to emphasize the paths of the Dremel.
Tools of the trade include various Dremels or dental tools, as well as masks or ventilators (because breathing bone particles into your lungs is not good for anyone). For more than information on how to get started carving bones and skulls, visit this website.
6. Pyrography
Pyrography is the art of decorating a material with controlled burn marks through means of a heated instrument such every bit a hot poker. It literally means "writing with burn" in Greek, and information technology tin be washed on whatever number of mediums, such as wood, leather, or, that's right, you guessed it—skulls! Skulls are the perfect medium for this craft because they don't burn also rapidly similar with leather, and the white background provides a delightfully stark dissimilarity for the brown-to-black fire marks.
Similar to carvings, pyrography requires special tools, steady hands, and lots of patience. Finished products are truly worth it though, and are as beautiful as they are unusual. This arts and crafts is definitely worth consideration!
7. Decoupage
Decoupage originates from the French give-and-take découpe, significant to cut out. Information technology is when an artist pastes cut-outs of newspaper or other similar material to an object and and so covers it with several coats of varnish, sealant, or lacquer.
The process gives paper patterns an appearance of depth and makes objects look more interesting because of the blueprint being laid on superlative of it. While decoupage is about oft done for things such as piece of furniture or various dwelling décor items, it can also exist done with skulls!
Decoupage leaves a skull feeling classy, even elegant. Floral patterns work peculiarly well, just any blazon of pattern can be used for this art. Newspaper, photographs, and even children's drawings all work well. For a stride-by-step process on how to decoupage, visit this website.
8. Bejeweling
To "bejewel", "bedazzle", or "strass" something is to comprehend it in jewels, gems, or other comparably shiny objects. Information technology might sound tacky, and memories of our junior loftier days when giggly girls covered their backpacks, shoes, and each other in ridiculous rhinestone motifs probably come to mind, but bejeweling skulls is so much more sophisticated than that.
With the right eye for color and form, bejeweling can transform a drab old skull into a brilliantly sparkly work of frosted art. It can be accomplished many different means, but people normally use rhinestones or Swarovski crystals and so painstakingly glue them onto their called surface, 1 later on another afterwards some other. The process can be fourth dimension consuming, but the results are ever jiff taking.
Some people have a classical approach to bejeweling, using but clear or white rhinestones, while others go a step further and use brightly colored crystals, larger pieces of costume jewelry, or even spikes! The combinations are endless. Just load yourself up with a few bags of pretty shiny things and grab yourself a glue gun, and yous're ready to start bejeweling!
ix. Painted Antlers
Antlers by themselves are as beautiful as nature intended them to be. But if you lot have twenty of them laying around your business firm, you tin can sometimes feel a little bored. Then why not effort painting to liven them up and turn them into actual home décor?
Antler painting is becoming more pop these days, and the style of this trending fashion typically carries a Southwestern vibe with it. Well-nigh commonly the paint used is acrylic, and usually only a few strips of colour are applied, with some of the natural antler still showing. Virtually all antler painting projects come out looking fantastic due to the fact that antlers, by themselves, are intriguing shapes and the epitome of artistry.
10. Miscellaneous
Miscellaeous skulls tin be a combination of whatsoever of the higher up listed mediums, or fifty-fifty things that aren't listed hither at all! Mixed media is as fun every bit it sounds. Many people do collages with their skulls and create works that are amagalmations of paints, feathers, gears, leathers, pyrography, and even LED lights. There is no limit to the inventiveness one tin can unleash when working with skulls, specially once you realize how many different things yous can do!
Talented costume makers will employ skulls in their designs, either as article of clothing fine art or equally attachments for accessories such as staffs, helmets, or belts. In that location is no doubt that the sight of an expertly decorated skull is as eyecatching as a beautiful painting. Afterward all, they are works of fine art!
Art is art, and art is arbitrary.
Experiment With Art
I encourage yous to experiment with different types of art, and would love to see what whatever of you come upwards with! Personally my favorite mediums to piece of work with so far have been alcohol ink and acrylic, but the metalizing stuff is fascinating and I would love to work more with that!
Art is art, and fine art is arbitrary. What is beautiful to y'all may non exist beautiful to others, and what is perceived as wonderful to others may hateful zip to you. Create things that take meaning to you and that please your heart and soul. You may find that others also share your taste, but your craft should never exist solely for the pleasure of others. Good luck, everyone, and remember to have fun with it!
This content is accurate and truthful to the best of the author'southward knowledge and is not meant to substitute for formal and individualized advice from a qualified professional.
Krystal Hernandez on September 13, 2020:
We paint and decorate our skulls and even singular bones with dried flowers. And then nosotros hang them. They come beautifully.
Doodledrawer on July 16, 2020:
Spray paint and acrylic pai
Yeyeyeyeey on October 07, 2019:
I like to eat them they're super cronchy
Drallion on May 02, 2019:
Naught still but i volition get-go with paint and probly clay. Tha g you for the information
Amanda on Apr 19, 2019:
We are currently combining unlike brute parts every bit in a balderdash skull, wild boar lesser jaw, buck antlers, Billy goat horn tusks, ect. It's the craziest thing I've always seen! Lol
EllieRad on January xiv, 2018:
I've painted lots of skulls and antlers and practice pyrographic art on skulls and antlers. Very pop here in Iowa, USA
Kerryanne from Cheshire United Kingdom on November 12, 2017:
Hi and firstly beloved you commodity. I take a skull I was given to by a friend over a year ago I have cleaned and allow to dry out. Was still getting a problem with wing larve. I cleaned again and made sure I removed any nastiness visible and so borax. Simply I'thou unsure what else to practice to prepare the surface every bit I don't want to start work on the peice if at that place will east lilliputian natures husks appearing again. Any advice would be awesome Thankyou again xxx
Mary Maxwell on July 18, 2017:
Awesome ideas! I am going to endeavour the metallic hydrodip on a moose skeleton I constitute :)
Shaddie (author) from Washington state on March 31, 2015:
That's too bad! Hither in the US information technology is considered a fiddling weird unless you're a hunter or outdoorsy blazon of person. Particularly if yous're a girl, people look at y'all like you're crazy :P
Emmanuel Kariuki from Nairobi, Kenya on March 31, 2015:
Wow - never imagined you could do so much with skulls as an art medium. Though I volition exist more than inclined to coffin them when I come across them, I rather like the metalizing process and would try information technology with other objects (not skulls). In my culture people will avoid you if you brandish a skull in a place other than a lab or museum.
Shaddie (author) from Washington state on March 28, 2015:
You're quite welcome! Skull collection is one of my favorite past times and I'm glad that other people enjoy seeing what cool things you lot can exercise with them :)
Shane M. Ilagan from Philippines on March 28, 2015:
I never idea that animals and homo skulls can be recycled like that! This is very creative! I dear the carved horse skull in the photograph above. Thank you for the excellent knowledge well-nigh reusing the skulls.
Shaddie (writer) from Washington state on March 21, 2015:
Hey, very absurd! Cow skulls are perfect candidates for art projects because they're big and sturdy. One thing I forgot to put on this listing (but will add afterward) is "bedazzled" skulls! Past gluing rhinestones or other sparkly objects to the surface of the skull, you can create a magical, about frosted appearance. Like these:
1) http://media-enshroud-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/b2/a9/54/b2...
2) http://img1.etsystatic.com/000/0/6494687/il_fullxf...
Cheers for reminding about dip kits. I take never personally done that, but I should definitely add it to this list. I will let you lot know if I piece of work on any skull projects anytime soon. Thanks for taking a look!
shannon on March 21, 2015:
love the skulls posted on this page, this is something I am looking into, We are hunters in south Alabama and I have a friend that owns cattle. my children ran beyond a cattle skull so I have been trying to figure out what I want to practice with it to put information technology in my store to endeavour to sell, which is when I came beyond your page. I was actually going to try to do the dipkits on i, (because I have done it before with deer skull and already familiar with the process) merely earlier I exercise that will wait into the alcohol ink as well. Please experience free to email me any recent pics of other skull south you have done would love to stay in touch to take someone motivate me to keep going and trying new things. I had a neighbor requite me another skull (cattle) this morning time so I have two to work with and I have a pocket-size cat skull my children constitute somewhere around the house as well lol!
shakaye1228@yahoo.com
Shaddie (author) from Washington country on March 19, 2015:
You're super welcome! I'm e'er happy to share what I know. Cheers for taking a expect :)
Mackenzie Sage Wright on March 19, 2015:
Wild! I don't really come across animal skulls much, and I guess I wouldn't exist very inclined to pick ane up if I did, lol. Just these are pretty amazing works of art, thanks for sharing.
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