Dia de los Muertos Fiesta!

This has been a busy week.  I've been trying to finish up my Dia de los Muertos alter...or sort of alter...for our annual Halloween party.   My inspiration came from last year's Halloween charm swap hosted by Michelle Cummings' Witches Cupboard Charm Swap at  http://faeriedustdreams-michelle.blogspot.com/.    I decided to use some of the charms in this year's creation and will post photos of those items once I receive permission from the artists who created them.

For now, here is a sneak peak:

These are my collection of skulls and skeletons grabbed from the sale tables after last year's Halloween season was over.   I used some of the skeletons whole and just added clothes to them.   For the disembodied skulls, I created bodies using clothes pins, pipe cleaners, wire, glue, and sticky bandage tape from my local drug store. 

The base of the alter is constructed from two scraps of inexpensive fencing wood, insulating foam, foam board and that thin, hard, board-like material with a name I can never remember.  It is like peg board without the holes!   Using my handy, dandy Ryobi scroll saw, I cut the shapes for my alter background and used a combination of Elmer's spray glue and E-6000  keep the layers together. 

Once the base was finished, it received a layer of sheetrock joint compound followed by sanding, a coat of gesso, and a layer of adobe colored acrylic paint.  Hardest of all was for me to keep my hands away from everything while each layer dried!

In the niche above the doorway, I placed an image of Our Lady of Guadelupe Modge Podged on to a foam board backing.  Of course, my old nemisis, impatience, raised its ugly head again when I tried to use the scroll saw to cut out the form before everything was dry.  All ended up a globby mess!

Second time around I decided to use an Exacto knife to cut out the layered image before mounting it to a turquoise, star embellished background and placing it in the niche.



Two of the skulls remained without bodies, so I mounted one on each side of Our Lady.

FROGWARTS FREEBIE!   Be sure to check out and download Graveyard I posted a few weeks ago.  Click on it to bring up the large format image and HAPPY SPOOKING!