Sugar Skull: My Day of the Dead (Día de Muertos) Halloween Costume Inspiration!
Hello world! I can hardly believe that the holiday season is upon us again, this year has gone by in a flash... Halloween is Thursday! Let's talk about costumes!! In my Halloween Throwback post from a couple years ago, I showed you an array of costumes that I've worn in the past. For many years I dressed as a hippy, mainly because I'm a hippy and I have all the clothes and accessories to put together an authentic costume. I got a lot of great reactions, especially the year that my brother and close friend joined me as hippies and my boyfriend at the time dressed up as Jimi Hendrix (he even carried around my electric guitar!).
In 2011 after a few years of being a hippy, I decided to mix it up and go back to scary costumes. I dug up an old Grim Reaper black gown that I had bought at a party store ages ago. The gown has an attached hood with optional fabric face cover, so I've used it for multiple costumes including a vampire, but ironically never for its intended Grim Reaper purpose, hahahaha! Although, perhaps 2011 counts since I walked around with my face covered as a faceless shrouded something (reaper? I guess). Anyway, last year I used it to be the Wicked Witch of the West:
As for this year, I just might use the gown again but I'm not sure. My costume idea for this year was inspired by something I found while shopping at Ross...
A ceramic Sugar Skull! Sugar Skulls are part of a Mexican tradition and holiday known as Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead), when friends and family gather to honor, remember, and pray for their loved ones who have died. The holiday takes place October 31 - November 2 and correlates with other holidays celebrating the dead, and involves widespread gatherings and creations of ofrendas, known in English as private altars. That's where the Sugar Skulls come in... Private altars honoring the dead consist of skulls made from sugar and intricately decorated, Marigold flowers, and the favorite possessions and foods of the deceased. "Scholars trace the origins of the modern Mexican holiday to indigenous observances dating back hundreds of years and to an Aztec festival dedicated to the goddess Mictecacihuatl." (Wikipedia). The holiday has spread and is widely celebrated not just throughout Mexico, but in many other countries and cultures as well (under different names of course), including parts of Asia, Africa, and Europe - such as Spain. You can read more about this holiday here.
Now that I've told you what inspired my costume for this year, and given you a brief background on it (in case ya didn't already know), let me get back to the costume talk... I'm loving this idea!! Also, ever since I snagged this gorgeous little ceramic sugar skull at Ross for $7.99 and cooked up this costume idea I have been seeing Day of the Dead costume ideas everywhere, including the local newspaper! Coincidence? Probably not, because it appears the Day of the Dead inspired face paint and costumes has been all the rage for some years now. I might be late to the party, but who cares, I am so excited to try my hand at some intricate face painting!! More on that below, but let's ogle my sugar skull once more because I am in love with it...
As you can see, I decorated the entryway again this year. I'll be back with more photos of that soon, in the meantime you can check out my decor posts from previous years here, here, here and here.
Right now I'm focused on putting together a great Day of the Dead Halloween costume! After combing the internets for inspiration photos, I stormed the local Dollar Tree store for supplies. Luckily, I was able to find most of what I need at the dollar store, including the face paint, mini skeletons (for props), and fake flowers for the crown I'm planning. That's right, I'm making a crown of flowers! A lot of the homemade costumes I've seen so far consist of flowers on the head, particularly Roses or the holiday's traditional altar gift of Marigolds. Since I love the color turquoise, I was really hoping to go for this look:
Isn't that fantastic?? The color combination of grey and turquoise looks great. However, I didn't want to spend a fortune on fake flowers to fill my entire crown, so I stuck to what the dollar store had. They had a lot of flowers to choose from, but none were black or grey. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find the same black roses I bought two years back to make my Halloween wreath. There were various colors and styles of flower to choose from, so after debating a couple options I settled on orange and purple. Those colors have more Halloween flair and go together very nicely. I'm not done making the crown yet, but here is what I have so far...
Basically, I'm filling the entire wreath with the flowers, but I have yet to secure them with hot glue, snip off the excess wire stem and finish off the interior lip with black ribbon...
I also used some feathers that I had in my craft box behind the skeleton, along with some smaller orange flowers for added decor.
So far so good, I think it looks awesome already!
Of course, I still have to contend with painting my face on Thursday! My mother and my aunt are also dressing in different variations of this costume, so I'll likely be helping them with face painting as well. I'm looking forward to it, although I'm a bit nervous because I want everything to come out really good. On Halloween we're all going with a group of friends to a local restaurant that we usually frequent on Thursdays for live Blues music! The house band is incredible (especially the guitarist, and open mic night guitarist contributors), they play Jimi Hendrix songs for me all the time, I'll have to share some of my videos with you one of these days!
I will be back tomorrow with a post on my Halloween home decorations. On Friday I'll have a post for you featuring my final Day of the Dead costume and my Halloween adventures. For now, I leave you with my favorite Day of the Dead costume inspiration photos and face painting ideas....
Catherine
xoxo
Photo by Seth Dubois via Pinterest - original source
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Hooray for sugar skulls!
Source
More Halloween blog posts:
Halloween
Facebook page photo albums:
Halloween Table-scapes and Decor #1
Halloween Table-scapes and Decor #2
Facebook page photo albums:
Halloween Table-scapes and Decor #1
Halloween Table-scapes and Decor #2
(All images in this post were sourced via Google images, they are not my personal images. I have provided links to the original sources whenever possible.)