Lark Crafts

Yesterday I investigated the hows and whys of the sugar skull, the sweet, colorful staple of the Dia de los Muertos celebration. The popularity of the sugar skull adornment is very prevalent, showing up everywhere from street art, t-shirts and tattoos to name a few. Today I would like to present a collection of amazing etsy finds that use the graphic sugar skull adornment as inspiration for a host of handmade items. Check out each after the jump and visit their shops for more outstanding handmade goods.

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The Mexican holiday Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) has always fascinated me. It’s a colorful celebration and a festive way to remember loved ones who have passed. The elaborate offerings of food, sweets and flowers are beautiful, taking months of preparation. One of the centerpieces of such offerings are sugar skulls. I’ve seen these colorful creations and the various incarnations of the art adorning them, but never fully investigated their significance until now.

Do you eat them? How do you make them? If you are lucky enough to have a local celebration you can make and decorate your own skull, but if not, don’t worry, mexicansugarskull.com has you covered. Their site has everything you need to make your own sugar skulls. Ingredients, recipes, molds, how-tos and all manner of decorations and inspiration for your own Day of the Dead celebration can be found there.

“Sugar Skulls are a traditional folk art from Southern Mexico used to celebrate Day of the Dead. Mounds of colorful sugar skulls are sold by Indian vendors in open air village markets during the week preceding the holiday. Spirits of the dead are welcomed back to their homes with beautifully decorated altars made by their loved ones. Sugar skulls, marigolds, candles, incense and special foods adorn home altars.”

 HOW TO MAKE SUGAR SKULLS.

Continue for a sugar skull how-to video…

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Looking for a last minute costume idea? This Medusa wig from Joanne O’ Sullivan’s Halloween will be sure to frighten AND it is very simple to make. A trip to the craft and/or toy store should be all you need to get started (unless you happen to have several fake snakes lying around the house).

 

Enjoy!

Medusa_Wig

 

 

Halloween is creeping upon us. It’s time to start thinking about carving pumpkins, gathering ideas for costumes and decorating the house for the witching hour. These charming Pumpkin and Cat decorations are very easy to make and add a spooky touch to your stairway banister or the backs of chairs. You could also use the templates to string together a haunting halloween garland. If you like this project, check out Bethany Lowe’s Folk Art Halloween for more ghoulish projects.Use the link below to download your free project and get started today.

pumpkin and cat decoration

Chris is a chicken keeper. Last year his backdoor neighbors became interested in chickens after reading Lark’s Homemade Living: Keeping Chickens with Ashley English. They asked Chris and his partner Skip if they wanted to join in establishing a flock of 9 hens and share the responsibilities and benefits (eggs) as a three family collective. Chris calls it their Coop Co-op. Now Chris & Skip scramble, ahem, to use the half a dozen or more eggs they collect every three days. The Craft Your Life team asked Chris to share his favorite egg recipe.

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This is more about a method than a recipe. In spring I made my first batch of Momofuku-inspired poached eggs and it was good. Momofuko is the name attached to chef David Chang’s three subtly different and unique New York restaurants and is the name of last year’s big bang cookbook, Momofuku by David Chang and Peter Meehan. Last fall, a lot of buzz around the cookbook was focused on Chang’s unique method for poaching eggs inside their shells by slowly simmering in a hot water bath. The result is a sublimely textured egg—a velvety mass of eggy richness.

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This Easter try Lynne Caldwell’s simple and charming adaptation of the Japanese dyeing technique known as shibori. This time-honored craft of resist dyeing has gained popularity through the decades, most notably during the vibrant 1960s, and became commonly known as “tie dye”. Shibori is also making a big comeback this spring on the runway as the top designers are resurrecting the craft.

This project is very easy and requires minimal tools and materials. If you like these shibori eggs, you may enjoy other projects in  The Artful  Egg. enjoy!

Free Project:  Shibori Eggs

A brief history of  how shibori became tie dye after the jump…

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