Necrobotany! Bone and plant accessories for a necromancer
So, ever since I saw this idea mentioned on Pinterest (see the post that stirred my brain here: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/835628905835908245/), I've been obsessed with the idea of botanical necromancers. This doesn't necessarily mean necromancers who bring plants back from the dead (there are possibilities there, but it's not quite the aesthetic I'm looking for), but rather magic users who combine their abilities to raise the dead as minions, and then enhance the dead with the help of plants. The post that I linked to above suggests "undead skeletons being supported by plant fibers to make up for missing muscles and ligaments so they can run instead of shamble" and "adding thorns or huge venus fly traps or poison onto minions."
So, being so enamored of this idea, I decided to try to include some aspects of this idea into my upcoming medieval faire costume, or even just for the house in general. In order to make this work, I needed some undead aspects, and some botanical aspects. Most of the bits were easy to collect from craft and thrift stores. For instance, I have a little skeleton cat leftover from Halloween (from the dollar store!)
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| You may recall this guy from the Lich King cocktail photos |
a resin-cast bird skull from Goodwill (I think it was $2)
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| It came painted like this. |
and an assortment of fake plants from Michael's sale on spring accessories.
Step 1: Prepare the pieces
This is really just collecting random stuff (thrift stores are your friend) and mashing them together however you want. As previously mentioned, I had a skeleton cat and a bird skull, which I wanted to use together. Unfortunately, the cat was a dollar store "bone" color (kind of a grey-ish white), while the bird skull had been painted to look like an old and unbleached bone (that dirty yellow-brown, just-found-it-on-the-forest-floor look). So I tried to age/discolor the skeleton cat with paint. As far as I'm concerned, the queen of this technique is Jen from over at Epbot (see https://www.epbot.com/2018/02/my-new-dirty-video-d.html for her tutorial), although it's a pretty common craft. Personally, I'm still pretty new to it, so my attempt was more...amateur.
Still, the basic idea is to slather on a coat of color with a dry brush (often using a dark brown, red, or black to simulate dirt, rust, grease, or decay), and then wipe it mostly off with a rag or napkin before the paint dries down completely, leaving you with that base color in the crevices of the pieces, where dirt and grease would collect naturally. To match the bird skull, I actually used a base coat of orange, and then I layered a lighter coat of brown paint on top. The color match isn't exact, and the paint is a little patchy in places, but I'm still pretty happy with it.
Step 2: Decorate bones with plants
It's all up to you. I did some traditional "plants in the eye sockets" for the skull, and I tried to wrap some leaves and vines (the vine being a floral wire from Joann's that came wrapped in green thread already) around the little cat to simulate a symbiotic (or parasitic!) relationship between the two.
Step 3: Admire and Revise
With this type of craft, you can do big or small, house-bound or out-on-the-town. It's all up to your imagination and the limits of your thrift stores and patience.
A note on using real bones:
This craft is totally doable with real bones, but there are some extra steps. I love to collect bones that I find out in the wild, but you do have to be careful here. There's a fair bit more preparation involved, because you need to make sure the bones are cleaned of flesh, and have been sufficiently de-greased. There are a lot of ways to do this, but most of them are long, smelly, and/or messy. For example, my mother found a pig skull a week or two ago and brought it to me (isn't she the best?), which I was hoping to include in this post. However, it's still being processed, so it didn't make the cut.
In processing your own bones, I would recommend Jake's Bones at http://www.jakes-bones.com/p/how-to-clean-animal-bones.html#dry as a starting place. He's a UK-based kid that's collected a lot of information on different ways to clean bones. Although not all of the methods are examined in detail, it's a good way to get an overall view of the process and decide which method is right for you. For my pig skull, I've also been following Mom Goes Camping (http://momgoescamping.com/how-to-clean-animal-bones-hydrogen-peroxide/).
I starting by cleaning and brushing (using a toothbrush) the worst of the dirt and leftover flesh off the skull with just some dish soap and hot water. When I was satisfied with that, I put the skull in a bucket of warm water and a few ounces of an enzymatic laundry detergent for a week to soak. Laundry detergents that use enzymes (called "biological washing powder" on Jake's Bones) are easy enough to find, although a lot of US-based detergent companies don't list their ingredients on the bottle, so I'd suggest using the internet before shopping to look it up. That helped soak the rest of the flesh off, along with a vigorous scrubbing afterwards (warning, this smells awful, I wouldn't suggest soaking the bones [otherwise known as macerating them] in the house). Currently I'm bleaching the skull with the help of some hydrogen peroxide, which helps take any remaining flesh or grease off as well. After that, you can add color back into the bones with help of paints and dyes, but be aware that most bone-cleaning processes are going to end up with a bleached-white appearance (DO NOT USE ACTUAL BLEACH, this weakens the bone structure. Also, fully boiling bones or sticking them in the oven will do the same. I know these sound like the easiest and simplest methods, but they are secretly the worst.)
Basically, when using real bones, be careful and take your time. It will almost certainly take longer than you think, and it is definitely going to smell. But then you get a really neat skull (or other bones) to traumatize you friends and random passersby with! And really, isn't that what this is all about?
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