Closet Progress ~ Sugar Skull Stencil

I knew that I wanted to do some type of stencil on the back wall of my closet but I wasn't sure at first what it would look like. You might have read previously that I was doing a Junk Gypsy inspired room and they actually had a show where they installed skeleton stickers in a closet. Then I thought, "Skeletons in a closet, how cute is that?" I have always loved the sugar skulls from The Day of the Dead and being from San Antonio, I thought these were perfect! It was a little tricky making the stencil but I'll show you how I did it.

First I drew out a pattern on poster board. If you fold over the poster board, you will have the matching pattern on the other side.

What I didn't realize at first is that the part that is cut out will be the part that is painted. Therefore, you would only see the shapes and not the skull itself. Then I realized that I could first paint the stencil on the left in gold and then paint over with the wall color with the stencil on the right to get the effect that I wanted.

I started the pattern by placing the first two skulls near the ceiling but so the pattern would end up going between the windows and then measured out from there.

Next, I used the other stencil over the top of the first one for the face details using the wall color.

I felt like the teeth needed to be filled in so I added a few lines at the mouth. Also, I wanted the cheeks to look more like flowers so I added a circle to the center. Even though this ended up being a three step process, it went pretty quickly.

The gold gives a really neat effect as it changes as you move around the room, where some skulls show up more than others as you move around. Now I literally have skeletons in my closet!