DIY Black Glitter Skull

I think my motto should be “Never underestimate the power of spray paint.” Because I’m pretty much just obsessed with it. I use it all the time. {Like here, here, here, and here, for starters — and I have several more projects that I’m working on right now that I’ll be sharing soon!} I’m quite certain the neighbors consider me some type of crazy person, because every time they come out of their house, there I am in the driveway, spray painting something else.

But it’s awesome. It is one of the cheapest, easiest ways to transform pretty much anything. And now they have all kinds of specialty spray paints, like metallic, chalkboard, and glitter.

Oh yeah. I said glitter spray paint. So, SO much better than glue and glitter, because, unlike that nightmare, the glitter spray paint doesn’t flake off anywhere near as much. {Granted, if you rub something that was glitter spray painted, you’ll have a little come off, but if you’ve ever had a kid bring home a glitter project from preschool, you know that with glue and glitter, there’s a possibility that you could be finding glitter around the house until their wedding day.}

Anyway, here’s the thing. I love glitter. It’s just plain fun. But I have 3 boys, so I don’t get a lot of glitter opportunities. Enter this project.

A black glitter skull.

Skull = super cool for boys. Glitter = super fun for me. Glitter skull = win/win.

Boom goes the dynamite.

This is what this little fella looked like before I got my grubby little hands on him. Got him at the dollar store too, so that makes him cheap and good-looking. {Cool for DIY projects, not so cool for people.}

Now, here are a few little comments about glitter spray paint. If you read the reviews on Amazon, they’re not fantastic. The spray nozzle tends to get clogged, and despite the fact that it says on the can to just spray it upside down to clear it, that does nothing. I would recommend keeping an extra can of spray paint around, and if your nozzle gets clogged {hee hee, that phrase made me giggle}, you can just switch it out with a new one. But despite this, I still love it.

To make your own glitter skull, start by spray painting him a coordinating solid color {in this case, black}. Glitter spray paint isn’t designed to color an object, it’s just going to glitter-fy it {whatever, that’s a word}, so you’ll need to start with a base color.

Once that’s dry, start hitting it with your glitter spray paint. I used about 3 coats for mine, because I wanted him to be as glittery as humanly possible. Like, the Liberace of Halloween decor. But I think I probably could have gotten away with only using 2.

You could seal it with a clear coat if you want to really make sure that none of that glitter is going to come off, but I’ve had some issues with clear coats recently {I talked about one here, and I had an even bigger one on one of the upcoming projects I mentioned before}, so I’m a little skittish around them now and decided not to do one on this project. But they make a special clear coat for glitter spray paint {not sure if you need to use this special one or if you could use any brand}, so if you really want to use one, you could try that.

I did, however, use a little bit of glow-in-the-dark nail polish to paint his eye sockets {another phrase you don’t hear every day} to make him a little extra fancy and festive. I tried to take some pictures to show that, but I’m going to pretend I didn’t, because they look worse than you could ever imagine.

So there you have it. A 17-page tutorial that can be boiled down to: Buy dollar store skull. Spray paint black. Spray with black glitter spray paint. The end. {Don’t judge me, people. I’m writing this at 3:30 in the morning after I had a kid throw up. I’m a little punchy.}

Have you ever used glitter spray paint before? Did you love it or did you have problems with it?

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