Remember Deer Skull? In a moment of weakness I bought a beaver skull. C’mon guys, it was on sale! I got it for cheaper because the front teeth, the most valuable part of the skull, were broken at the tips. I’m going to cover the whole skull with beads similar to the deer but in gold and jewel tones. I have a lot of beads left over from the acorn necklace.
And after my dad died I submitted a 6″ x 6″ tile to the Museum of Beadwork, I used more of those metallic beads there.
So for this skull instead of matching the color of the bone I’m going hard in the opposite direction. I painted the everything except the teeth blue and put blue and green felt on areas where I might want to shove in some decorative pins. I need a substrate to shove the pins into and bone is notoriously resistant.
I used Apoxie Sculpt to mold clean ends on the teeth. I can cover those bits with beads and you’ll never know they were janky and broken. Fun fact: The reason the fronts of the teeth are orange is because that’s rust. Their teeth are covered with iron.
I want there to be a gold line going from the forehead to the back. Lord, this has been a journey. I first beaded a beautiful strip. I couldn’t believe the richness of the gold color. Then I realized the richness is due to the beads being covered in 24K gold. I had forgotten I had bought them. I am very much not using those beads on a frikkin’ beaver skull so I took it apart.
Attempt #2. I decided I wanted it to be a pointed stripe fading into dark blue. The color blend was too chunky so that one was scrapped.
Attempt #3. Nope.
Attempt #4. YES.
I will clip those loose threads and I can fix the wobbliness when I glue it down by pushing it around until it sets.
That took a solid week to make one strip. This learning curve needs to pick up but I’ll get there. Eventually.