Sugar Skull

I love working on projects that are a bit out of the ordinary, and this one definitely hit that mark. A friend asked if we could make a special present for his wife’s birthday. She loves Sugar Skulls and he was arranging various parts of her birthday celebrations around that theme.

I thought this was a really interesting idea, using a fun and colourful medium to represent the essence of sugar skulls as a joyful celebration of life and love.

There are currently a variety of ‘bust’ style sets available from LEGO - the Helmet Collection - and the Iron Man one is the closest to a complete human-shaped skull from that range. We started with that as a base and worked to make the whole skull white, whilst retaining the black pedestal base, complete with a space for a bespoke-printed dedication.

Running with this - and having ascertained the recipient’s preferred colours and feelings on traditional sugar skull decorative symbols - I began to sketch out some ideas for the face, starting with the eyes and mouth. I wanted to incorporate a sense of trailing flowers, whilst retaining the clean and stylised lines that are integral to the tradition.

Once I began to get my eye in for how the decoration elements moulded themselves to the contours of the base piece it became a really fun project to work on. The client shared images of some other things for the celebration he was planning, which included a flower crown element that I really wanted to represent. The pieces I used only appeared in very limited colours at the time of building, but amazingly in the last few weeks they have been released in a green colour too. This will prove incredibly useful for future flower-related builds - I only wish they’d shown up a couple of months sooner!

I finished the skull and worked out a custom packaging solution to ensure its safe transit to Canada and shipped it on its way. The client and recipient were both delighted, which is always a relief and a great feeling of accomplishment.

Happy Birthday!