Thread: Skull stumped

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Hey folks,

Last year I purchased 4 skull statues off eBay, only to discover when they arrived that they're not lifesize (my bad - I did not read the item description closely enough). The skulls are roughly 1/2 normal size, measuring 6 inches from jaw to the back of the head, and 4.25 inches high. Here's a photo:



Other than being undersized, they are very cool. They're made of solid resin, have nice detail, and look good from any angle, even from underneath. In some ways, they're so nice I'm hesitant to permanent affix them to anything, unless it's something seriously cool.

But other than displaying them on a shelf, what can I do with them? I'm looking for suggestions on how to incorporate them (remember, there's four) into my pirate display for 2010. Any thoughts?

Wow, those ARE cool. Maybe childrens skulls? I have a budget Bart from ACC that I use for a child in my dungeon scene.
You have to get over your fear of attaching them to something. Those are going to make cool props!!!

I have 4 similar skulls I got also solid from Walgreens. I took one and mounted a pvc candle on top with "drips" running down in hot glue. Apart from that I'm also at a loss what to do with them except just place them around inside the house for my party (too nice and too easy to run off with outside).

I thought to try my hand at casting one of them for the first time... can never have enough (though still unsure what to do with them LOL). I'll use the casted ones for mounting, etc; most likely.

make a PVC candle chandler out of them, when attached to the ceiling it would be hard to tell they are too small

Skulls on fence corner posts? On tombstones? I like the chandelier idea.

Thanks for the ideas, folks.

The chandelier is a clever idea for hiding the scale issue (thanks Scott N). Unfortunately, I really don't decorate the inside of my house for Halloween and I'm really looking for ways to use the skulls outside in my pirate haunt. I suppose I could use the tried and true method Bamtunebam suggests of mounting them on posts. I have a metal arbor astride my front walk which I affix a sign to that says "Dead Man's Cove" (see the photo below), and I could mount two of the skulls on corner posts of the arbor.



I plan to also create a pirate cemetery to the right side of the walkway, and I could place the remaining two skulls on the gateway posts on the cemetery entrance (I plan to enclose the cemetery with some simulated iron fencing).

But I guess I was really hoping for examples of some sort of South Seas cannibal display or something similar that I could copy, such as all the skulls hanging from a warning post. Does anyone have pictures of anything like that?

Thanks again for the help - I do appreciate it. BTW, Dr. Dark, your idea of using them as children's skulls is excellent and that's the first thing I thought of, but I personally find scary scenes involving kids or babies to be very disturbing and I try not to (at least intentionally) cause any psychological damage to my TOTs. :-) There's a lot of very young kids in my neighborhood, so I aim for spooky rather than downright frightening with my display. Give me a couple more years and I probably won't care, but for now, I'm trying not to scar anyone for life. :-)

If you didn't mind doing a little tp or papier mache corpsing on them, and attaching a little hair, they would make exceptionally fine shrunken heads, which would fit in with your pirate display very well...

Originally Posted by Baron Samedi

If you didn't mind doing a little tp or papier mache corpsing on them, and attaching a little hair, they would make exceptionally fine shrunken heads, which would fit in with your pirate display very well...

Excellent idea, but why stop at 4? make a mold of one and have all the skulls/shrunken heads you could ever possibly use.

Originally Posted by Baron Samedi

If you didn't mind doing a little tp or papier mache corpsing on them, and attaching a little hair, they would make exceptionally fine shrunken heads, which would fit in with your pirate display very well...

Baron's idea is a great one. That's exactly what I would do with these mini skulls.

You could also place the skulls on 10' tall poles or stripped tree branches. The small size of the skull would create a forced perspective and make it look much taller than it actually is.

Here's an example:


You could also try watching the movie Cannibal Holocaust to (pardon the pun) tear into the flesh of the cannibal world. (I don't have the stomach to see it myself.)

Originally Posted by Haunter

Baron's idea is a great one. That's exactly what I would do with these mini skulls.

You could also place the skulls on 10' tall poles or stripped tree branches. The small size of the skull would create a forced perspective and make it look much taller than it actually is.

Here's an example:


You could also try watching the movie Cannibal Holocaust to (pardon the pun) tear into the flesh of the cannibal world. (I don't have the stomach to see it myself.)

If you would, please, where did you find that source pic?