Aliens or Skeletons?

Halloween is almost here! Have your costumes ready? Your candy bought? Your decorations for parties done? Need a last minute fun project for Halloween? I've got just the thing for you today then! It's a knock-off Potter Barn vase project. 

Here are the original Pottery Barn vases:

http://www.potterybarn.com/products/skull-terra-cotta-halloween-vases/?pkey=e%7Cskull%2Bvase%7C162%7Cbest%7C0%7C1%7C24%7C%7C2&cm_src=NLASEARCH||NoFacet-_-NoFacet-_-NoMerchRules-_-

Blogger Danielle Monroe saw these and came up with her own much cheaper DIY version inspired by the Pottery Barn vases:

http://myenroutelife.blogspot.com/2012/09/how-to-diy-2-pb-skull-vases-for-under-15.html

Creepy and cool, no?! I think they are awesome. Serena did too and decided to give these a try last Halloween. Here's what she ended up with:

The Pinstrosity:

Serena said, "When we put it in the pumpkin we carved, my husband said, 'That's a nice alien sweetie'. And I realized he meant my skeleton vase. Fail on skeleton vase, win for aliens!"

This is hard one to make work as per the directions, as spray paint dissolves styrofoam. I'm guessing that when the directions say "Bring the vases back out to your painting area and give them another light coat." they mean a really really light coat. Some dissolving of the styrofoam will be okay and might make it look cool, but too much dissolving and you'll get alien heads instead of skeletons. You could try painting the styrofoam with white acrylic/crafting paint in the same color as your vase, but that's going to be hard to get the two colors exactly the same.

Then my other idea for this project (just something I'd try if I were doing this...I don't know how great it'd work), is for the gluing process. Once I had the heads glued onto the vases I'd add some extra glue around the edge of the head where it meets the vase, and spread it a little to try and get the texture to look like the head is coming out of the vase and not just stuck on the vase. Then after all the glue is dry I'd paint it. I don't know if that'd work or not...but that'd be one tweak I'd try out just as a part of my personal over achieving crafting mindset. 

But even with the dissolving that went on with the skeleton heads for Serena's skeletons, I like how they turned out! That second vase really is creepy and so Halloweeny and awesome...even if it is an alien and not a skeleton. At least aliens are still Halloweeny!