How to Turn a Dollar Store Skeleton Into a Realistic Prop Easily

So when shopping at my local supermarket I noticed they were selling some cheap Halloween decorations. I saw this bag of bones and I knew I could make that look a million times better. So as a personal challenge I wanted to see if I could make this to look exactly how I imagined in a single afternoon. Well 4 hours later and here we are, I got some perfect spooky bones for the yard. And now I'll show you how to do this yourself so you can freak out your neighbors too!

1.) Plastic Skeleton Bones

2.) Exacto Knife

3.) Brown Paint

4.) A plastic cup

5.) Sandpaper

These kinds of bones are mass produced and are really cheaply made so they don't have the best quality control. I noticed around some edges there was an ugly seam that stuck out of the skull. To remedy this I wanted to cut it off. Using an Excto knife I was able to super carefully cut the excess plastic off and clean up the edges. But if you use a knife to do this always point the blade away from yourself and never have your fingers in the way of the blade. Alternatively if you don't want to risk your fingers you could always use a dremel, a tool I used later on to save time.

Now you've seen how to clean up the skull we can clean up the rest of the bones. These cheap plastic skeletons have the mold marks on literally every piece so get ready to be here a while. I suggest if you have it use a dremel to save time. If you don't be very careful with the knife, sharp craft knives can be very easy to slip with. If you are uncomfortable with using an exacto knife just use scissors or skip the step altogether.

Once you've cut off all the excess plastic from each piece you can then sand every piece down. It doesn't have to be a very heavy sand on each piece. We just want the paint to stick and sometimes paint doesn't stick to certain plastics, so we do this to prepare for painting. It's time consuming but it's a worthy result in the end.

Before we start painting we are going to create a thing called a wash. To create a wash we get a disposable plate, and we put a tiny bit of brown paint on there, next we add a bit of water and mix the water and paint. This creates a watery paint mixture. We can spread this mixture called a wash all over the bones. The wash's use is to get within the cracks and leave this paint residue on the top which works perfectly for our bones. Once the wash is spread all over a bone you can dab off the wash with a paper towel, and Tada! you've finished one bone now time for the others.

Repeat the previous steps with all the bones left. Make sure to get into every crack and don't get lazy with dabbing off the paint. Another tip to keep in mind is if you accidentally apply too much paint you can always apply more water and it remove's the excess paint. If you wait for that water to dry you can reapply the wash a little lighter. Now with all the tips and tricks you can finish off the rest of the bones and get some nice photos.

Congratulations you've done it! I hope your new bones are looking as great as mine. If you want to protect your bones from rain or even just the outdoors you can coat them in a coat of clear protective spray paint. I wouldn't use gloss though because it ruins the effect. But with that, you've finished I hope you enjoy, it was a fun afternoon activity, and it makes a great decoration for cheap.

Happy Halloween, and Thanks for Reading!