Ram Skull - 20-10-10 - 1 of 3

Ram Skull made for part of my Halloween costume for this year (the whole costume will be posted online once it's complete and ready)

The real things were going for £20-£30 on ebay... I wasn't going to pay that for just part of the costume. So I made my own.

A wire frame to start with, with slight corrugated cardboard for strengthening; then covered in paper maché to give a sort of rigid shell; next step was covering it all with salt dough (works well... but is fairly dense, heavy stuff - so I had to do this bit in many steps, drying it in between; or it'd just fall off or deform) ; this gave a much better 'proper' shape and let me put in a few details. Then, I painted it; quite unprofessionally I know, but hey, it's only a halloween prop. The horns were done with two colours of paint done in stripes then half mixed together whilst still wet in the hope of giving a rippled look; then some darker stripes were painted along the curves of the horns. This idea came from a real ram skull I'd seen with this sort of horn pattern. The skull itself wasn't painted, but rather dabbed/brushed with some leftover coffee and tea, to make it look old and weathered (after an initial white paint base coat). Lastly, I varnished the lot - more so on the horns - to get rid of the matt finish and give it a hard protective coating.

2 more photos coming up...