Skull-lift! (Skull Makeunder)

To cheer myself up, I started working on a few Halloween projects of mine for 2020. This was one of ‘em! 

I took an old skull prop that I previously altered to look like a clown complete with a slurpee lid paper mache nose and gave it a look as if it was naturally decaying in the elements. I saw someone do something similar to a full size skeleton and it looked like it would fit my haunted trail/spooky garden theme for this year so I gave it a try myself. 


Here’s the night view! I just popped a color-changing LED bulb back there and it rotates through about 8 colors. I also set an orange fire LED in front of it to achieve the spooky ambient lighting.


Here’s the before pics and a little of the process. I gave it a simple coat of primer, then added skull-colored paint, tons of green hues, and glued on tissue paper and moss for a little bit of texture. 


I used the clown skull MANY times throughout my clown scenes over the years. It was time for something fresh!

LED Light Ideas

A few more LED lighting ideas. Don't you get bored with wrapping the lights up the same way each year? I do! Each year I try to find a different way to display lights both inside my house as well as on the outside. A few ideas I came up with are this diagonal zig-zag design on my window with orange and purple LED light sets which I loved. It looked super bright and spooky! The other sets were actually kind of boring, so I tore off some eyeballs from an incandescent set and put them on purple and soft white light sets. Sometimes the eyeballs would roll off because they were a little loose but since it was temporary it didn't really matter. I also use the close quarters of my kitchen to run the lights mid-air connecting them to either side of the wall. 


Halloween LED Light Ideas

I'm really into LED lights, whether it be for Halloween or Christmas. They're so much brighter, use less energy and are a lot safer because the bulbs don't get hot. In fact, over the years I have completely switched to only LED and its all I'll buy now! Above you'll notice skeleton LED lights intertwined with bright blue LED lights from Christmas. Together they give off an eerie and skull-tastic glow and look great with the light on or off! My recommendation is to try to find blue, purple, or red LED light sets on clearance after Christmas to add to your indoor or outdoor scenes. These were draped over my shelves in the photos below.

Also, I added battery-operated light sets to some of my plastic pumpkins for a cool glow. They look fangtastic but it does get tiresome to have to change out the batteries from time to time. I also try to buy any LED pumpkin lights I can after Halloween. I usually get lucky and get several and tend to use those for mostly indoor use.