Tutorial: How to Make Sugar Skull Beads

While working on Skull Week over at the 7/25 blog, I ended up needing to customize a whole lot of cheap plastic skull beads to make them unique.  This time of year is great for getting skulls and other Halloween-y or Goth types of components on the cheap, but it can be hard to make it look like you didn't just walk on out of a dollar store covered in plastic bones.  : )  I hope this tutorial helps you to customize some of the amazing finds you can get at this type of year to reflect your own personal style!

To start, you will need:

- Several Colors of Nail Polish.  I used colors from Salley Hansen's Insta-Dry and Xtreme Wear lines.  Enamel craft paints would also work well as they leave a nice glossy finish.
- Plastic Skull Beads.  I got mine at Michael's craft stores on pre-made bracelets for 1.99.
- Bamboo kebab skewers.  These are to help you handle the beads while painting them and keeps them free of surface contact for a flawless finish.  I got mine in the picnic supplies isle at my local Kroger.
- Very small point paintbrush, toothpicks, wire clippings, or straightened paperclips.  These will be for making the details on the skulls.  I ended up using 6 inch lengths of 20 gauge beading wire because it was what I had on hand.
- Newspaper, wax paper or other covering to protect your work surface.  That's pretty self-explanatory.  : )
- A well ventilated room.  This can be a really stinky project, so I highly recommend opening a window, turning on a fan, or working outdoors to keep you from inhaling a lot of fumes.  Also, if you feel lightheaded please remember to walk away for a bit.
- 20 ga or larger beading wire.  This is to create eye pins for your skull beads once they are finished.  Skip this material if you want to use your beads for something else.
- Bracelet clasp, or lobster claw clasp with large jump ring.  This will be the closure for your finished bracelet.

Step 1:  Find some plastic skull beads!  I got mine at Michael's on these pre-made stretch bracelets.  I haven't figured out what to do with the cross-bones style beads, but I am sure I will think of something soon.

Pre-made plastic skull bracelet.

Step 2:  Liberate your beads!  You can already see how much cuter they look once they've been liberated from their chunky stretch bracelet prison.

Liberated skull beads.

Step 3:  Skewer your beads.  On the left hand side of the picture in Step 4, you can see an unpainted skull bead on its bamboo kebab skewer.  This step is easy; just take the pointy end of the skewer and insert it into the hole on the bottom of the bead until the bead fits snugly enough that you can rotate the skewer without it coming loose or falling off.

Step 4:  Paint your skulls in their base color.  Once your beads have been skewered, you can use the skewer as a handle to rotate your bead while you paint it with your chosen colors of nail polish.  I simply used the nail polish brush to paint the skulls.  If you need to add a second coat of color be sure to let your first coat dry completely before adding more.  Otherwise it can become a sticky mess that takes forever to dry.  It took most colors two coats, and some colors three coats to fully cover the original color of the bead.  I did choose to leave some of the eye sockets darkened as I liked the effect, but it's easy enough to get in there and color them with the nail polish brush if you like.  You can see where I did that on the white, blue and purple skulls.  Set the skulls aside to dry completely before moving on to Step 5.

Skewered skulls with their base color coats finished.

Step 5: Begin adding dot patterns to your skull in a contrasting color.  Now is the time where we grab our tiny paintbrush, wire clipping, or toothpick and start adding dots to create the sugar skull look.  Take your implement of choice and just dip it into the nail polish bottle.  Let all the excess polish drip off before you start dotting on the skull or you'll end up with blobs instead of dots.  : )  I found it easiest to just touch the edge of the wire to the lip of the nail polish bottle to let the excess paint flow down before I took the wire to my skull.  Once your wire or brush is ready, allow the remaining polish to collect (very slightly) at the end tip and then lightly touch it to the skull.  I found I could get about three good dots in before I needed to re-dip my "brush".  And about every third dip or so I wiped the whole wire down on a napkin to clean it off completely.  On later skulls this helped my dots stay tiny.

As for the actual design of the dots my recommendation is that less is more, especially when it comes to the first color dots.  A skull can really quickly fill up, so keep your highlights to a minimum on the first couple of colors.  You can always add more later if you need to, but it's really hard to take them off once they've been added.  If you have a steady hand you can also add lines, swirls, scalloped edges and other details to your skulls.  I'm not steady handed at all so I stuck with dots and maybe a couple of lines.  : )  For design ideas just do a Google image search for Sugar Skulls.  There are a lot of good ideas for several different styles of sugar skulls pictured.

WARNING:  Please let your first color of dots dry completely before moving on to the next color.  Otherwise there will be smearing tragedy!  Or if you are impatient like me you can see Step 7 if you are imatient like me and need to fix a mistake.  : )

Adding nail polish dots with a wire "brush".

Step 6:  Continue to add color dots in contrasting colors all over the skull.  I picked four colors for my blue skull's highlights, and once the previous color was dry I just continued to add more dots all over the skull bead.  I included the back and sides as I wanted to make a bracelet and the rounded nature of the skull beads themselves meant that they would spin around some, and I didn't want there to be any "blank" blue space on my skulls.  Following the natural lines and contours of the head seemed to work best for me when planning out how to place my dots.  Don't be afraid to add horizontal as well as vertical lines of dots to add interest.

Back of sugar skull bead with multi color dots.

Step 7:  Correcting smears and other mistakes:  Despite your best efforts, sometimes the pattern on your skull will smear.  The best way I found to counter this was to dab as much of the offending polish as I could away with a paper towel.

Oh goodness!  A smear!  : )

Then, I took the tiniest paintbrush in my drawer (NOT the nail polish brush itself; that added way too much polish), dipped it in the nail polish and removed all excess polish, then lightly painted over the smeared area.

Painting over a smeared area.

Finally, once that area is dry you can add your pattern back to the skull, hopefully with a little more luck than I had!  I smeared and had to repaint the same area twice on this bad boy.

Final look of "corrected" area on sugar skull

Step 8:  Finalize pattern and add clear coat for protection.  Once you are done adding your colored dots, spots, stripes, and other adornments you can look over your skull one last time to see if there are any areas that need filling.  I went a little overboard on this guy as he was my first attempt.  My preference on later skulls was to use slightly less detailing and allow the base color of the skull to show through more but it really depends on you preference and the look you are going for.  : )  Once everything is good and seriously dry I recommend using a clear coat of acrylic craft paint for protection.  I found that a clear coat of nail polish made some of the colors bleed and look smear-y.

Finalized sugar skull bead

Step 9: Repeat, repeat, repeat!  It took me about 1/2 an hour to add the details to my first skull, but that seemed to be mostly learning curve.  The more skulls I painted the less time I ended up spending on each one.  It was also helpful to have several colors of base skulls available so I could add one color of highlights to the first, then work on the second while that one was drying, and so on.  Paint as many skulls as you want!  Enough for a bracelet and earrings set, or two bracelets, or a totally funky necklace.  : )

Assortment of finished sugar skull beads.

Step 10: Assemble Bracelet.  Take your finished skulls off their skewers.  Cut a 4'' length of beading wire (I used 20 gauge, but higher gauges would work well too.  Make a large loop with round nose pliers at one end of the wire.  You want to be sure your loop is large enough that the skull doesn't slide off the wire.  Then, cut excess wire off the top, leaving about a 1'' tail.  Use that tail to make another large loop with your round nose pliers.  Do this step for all your skull beads.  Then, connect your newly wired beads at the loops, making a line of skulls.   On the first loop, connect the clasp of your choosing.  I used a lobster claw clasp because the skulls were too large to make a toggle clasp effective.  On the last loop of the string of skulls, attach your large jump ring that will connect with your clasp.  Hurray!   You have finished your sugar skull bracelet.

Finished DIY Sugar Skull Bracelet

If you have any questions feel free to leave them for me in the comments section.  For more cool jewelry ideas check out our other blog. And you are always welcome to stop by our Etsy Shop.  Thanks, and we'll see you next time!