One of my all time favorite fall crafts is painting pumpkins. Not carving, painting. Carving is fun, to be sure, but it drives me crazy when I make that one wrong cut and the whole thing is botched! I do it every time and just ugh! Drives me bananas. When painting a pumpkin, there is a little more room for error. If you goof something, just wait for it to dry and paint over, yay!
In the past I've always done the traditional funny face painted pumpkins but this year I wanted to do something different. Enter Casa Artelexia and her fabulous post!
Yes!! Sugar skull pumpkins! That's certainly different! Check out her post here. 
So what is a sugar skull you ask? I'm so glad you did!
Sugar skulls are an important component of the Mexican holiday, the Day of the Dead. This holiday falls on November 2 (also my Birthday) and coincides with the Catholic holiday, All Souls Day. However this tradition dates back as far as the ancient Aztec culture that ruled the land for hundreds of years prior to European colonization. The main focus of the festival is to celebrate the dead and support them on their spiritual journey. In small villages, families attend the cemeteries to clean the graves, offer gifts to their deceased loved ones, and honor them with memoirs and parties. Religious adornments were rarely affordable by villagers but are an important part of the offerings given to the dead. Since Mexico has an abundance of sugar, this became a popular material choice for grave decorations. Sugar skulls are set on graves and meant to depict the deceased person as a welcome invitation for the spirits to join the festivities.
Certainly macabe and a bit strange to our American eyes, this tradition has been one of growing interest in the states. For me, I always enjoyed telling people I was born on the Day of the Dead. It just sounds creepy, and I like creepy. So why not make pumpkins for Halloween as well as my up coming celebration right? Here's the breakdown:
Step 1
Find sugar skull examples. I Google image searched and came up with tons. After looking over a few it became obvious that there were certainly some themes: flowers, crosses, paisley-ish designs, ivy, etc. Basically, nature and God. I can get behind that!
Step 2
Paint your whole pumpkin a light color and allow to dry. Obviously white would make the most sense but I decided to do several in light hues of green, purple, pink, blue, and yellow. Caliente came over to help me with my project and suggested painting an inverted one as well which I think turned out to be my favorite! We named it the zombie sugar skull!
Step 3
Paint your eyes, nose, and teeth black. Then allow to dry. I did mine free hand. For the eyes, use a wide flat brush to make nearly perfect circles. The nose is essentially an upsidedown heart. While the teeth are just symmetrical humps with lines drawn through them.
Step 4
Design your sugar skull. Choose a couple of themes and ideas from examples and go for it! Don't be afraid to pick up your pumpkin and turn it to get the angle right and easiest for the design.
Step 5
Pay attention to detail. Some designs use lighter colors to highlight or black outlines to make graphics pop. These little elements will really help your design pop.
I really loved this project. It really got me thinking outside the box. I wonder how I'll paint my pumpkins next year! Too fun!