Day of the Dead ATCs

I have always loved the Day of the Dead artwork. After I did some research on it, I understood the odd combination of religion, culture and art, especially about the meaning of the sugar skulls.

The Day of the Dead theme for October’s heARTist Trading group was pretty far outside my comfort zone, and even after I did a lot of research, I still didn’t know where to begin.

So, I rifled through my boxes and bins and drawers looking for inspiration—which I found in a piece of “scrappy” fabric that I made a while back. It was too brightly colored—garish really—so I tucked it away in the bottom of a box for months. But when I took it out last week, it said “Mexican Fiesta” to me, so I used it as the base of the ATCs.

I auditioned a bunch of other elements, finally settling on a little blue paper sugar skull and some metal crosses that had been in my jewelry components box for ages. The final touch was the “ruby” gems in the eyes, giving it just the right amount of creepy magic.