The Mystery of the Haunted Vampire

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Monday, October 24, 2005

DIY Monday: Day of the Dead sugar skulls

I'm thinking of making this a semi-regular feature... Why on Monday? Well, initially it was just because that was the day I stumbled across the how to make a secret door link, but now I'm thinking Monday might not be a bad day for DIY stuff... After all, if it catches your fancy, you're going to need some time to figure out how to get all the stuff you'll need, right? And so, installment #2 of DIY Monday: Mexican Day of the Dead sugar skulls. I love these things - and I love the idea of a holiday that manages to celebrate live through an acknowlegement of its passing - the color and imagery of a Día de los Muertos is quite breathtaking in the intensity of the visuals and emotion both. Anyway, on to the how-to links: Phoenix Newspaper's azcentral has a bunch of how-to articles for the Day of the Dead, along with accompanying video. A more in-depth (or anal, depending on your perspective) approach can be found here (making the skulls) and here (decorating the skulls), at GourmetSleuth.com; I don't know about you, but I like photos to accompany my recipes... And lastly, this site, Inkubus, is another source for all the supplies you'd need to make your skulls - I've included them because they're the site I got the first image from... Google "Day of the Dead" and you'll find tons of links, for both images and information. One of my personal favorites for images is the one that this image came from:

5 Comments:

Blogger MariK said...

México!!!
Día de muertos!!!
november the 2nd

Well there's a lot of things around this date... there's a day for dead babies or children, a day for dead adults.

There's the papel picado, which is paper cut in cadaveric ways all colorfull.

There's the ofrenda, which is an altar dedicated to the deads, with pictures from the persons that are remembered, with food they liked, with water for purification, with candles for lighting the way, with flowers, with sugar skulls, with alcohol, with cigars...

The altar is placed with 3 levels: heaven, earth and hell.

In the cemetry people come to the graves and clean them and put flowers and candels. They stay for the night acompanning the return from their loved ones.

10/24/2005 06:47:00 PM  
Blogger protected static said...

Yeah, I know I should have gone into more detail - there's a depth of richness to the festival that I really love. I thought jimclime.com, the site where I grabbed the last image, did a wonderful job of documenting many of the other facets of the festival.

I'm sorry I didn't do it justice - perhaps we here at MotHV should pull together a more in-depth look at All Hallows/All Saints customs around the world.

(And thanks for the note about the 3 levels of the altar - I wasn't aware of that)

10/24/2005 06:59:00 PM  
Blogger Carnacki said...

Love the post.

10/25/2005 12:31:00 AM  
Blogger protected static said...

Thanks - do you think I should try and make this a regular feature?

10/25/2005 10:16:00 AM  
Blogger Carnacki said...

Seems like a great idea to me.

10/25/2005 10:41:00 AM  

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