Back in 2021 I started decorating a beaver skull. I painted it dark blue, covered it with dark blue felt (in case I wanted to impale some pins in it), and started making beaded components. Refer to this post for my first attempt(s). I was heartily displeased by how clompy the glue looked so I was like “Enough trying to salvage. We’re ripping it all off and starting over in 2023.” And that’s what I did.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: What the hell is with these colors??? The colors looked washed out as hell here. These are the colors in real life.
You seein’ those? You see this? This has all those colors. Where are they??
When I’m done I’ll take pictures outside in the sunlight, maybe that will help. Something I did that really helped was pull the lower jaw off of the primary part of the skull. It was hot-glued on by the teeth so it wasn’t that hard to remove. I must have shook one of the bottom teeth loose because it slid out and OMG do you know how much of the beaver skull is tooth? Whatever you’re thinking, it’s more than that.
It’s all tooth in there! Absolutely bananas.
I was going to try to salvage any of the pieces that I had removed but I decided starting fresh had to be totally fresh. I painted the skull that dark blue but didn’t add felt because I don’t anticipate putting pins anywhere. That reduces the bulkiness as well. I building everything off the skull for the first layer because I find it easier to stick on plaques of beads rather than individually. They drop off less if they’re a mass threaded together.
I’m aggressively procrastinating on the sides of the lower jaw. It’s going to be an odd shape, there’s going to be a full color transition from blue-black to gold and back AND I have to make two symmetrical versions. Ugghhhh. I’ll do it, I’ll do it, but I won’t be happy about it.