The only wooden skeletons they had were sadly misshapen things, with heads that more closely resembled the gourd family than a human skull. So I took an exato-knife to them, and helped them out a little. I was glad I'd gotten three of them, as the first one ended up splitting in a couple rather unattractive places. When I was done, they looked a little something like this:
Certainly not the most realistic skeletons, ever, but that's okay. I reattached the heads very carefully by punching holes through their chins with a brass tack, and then threading the wire through the hole.
After that, I painted them with two coats of black paint. I outlined the bones with silver, and used red and yellow to give them flaming hearts, which are actually relatively realistically shaped. I was proud of myself. I used sparkle paint leftover from my Carnivale mask two years ago to paint the eye-flowers (turquoise for the man, purple for the woman).I knitted the woman a shawl of three strands of white thread held together, and cut the man a turquoise vest out of leftover material from my Carnivale skirt. At first it looked a lot like his day-job must have been as a convenience-store clerk, but I think I've reshaped it enough that it looks better now.
For the backing, I sliced the piece of styrofoam backing that came with the shadowbox in half with a hacksaw (that was messy, let me tell you. Little bitty balls of styrofoam went everywhere, and refused to leave. Tenacious little suckers. In future, will do this outside, or in shop, or somewhere other than upstairs, in the studio, surrounded by fiber that can't wait to mate for life with little particles of white, spongy stuff). I glued the thin piece to the back of the shadowbox, and then glued a piece of purple scrapbooking
paper, to which I had affixed a bunch of black rhinestones in a random pattern, to the front of the styrofoam. I balled up a length of pretty turquoise ribbon at the bottom of the box. The message is written on a piece of cream-colored paper, which I crumpled up and then unrolled several times before I wrote on it. It is taped to their legs on the back, while they are taped to the top of the box.At some point I will probably attempt to tack them to the top of the box with small staples, and I'm still working out how to get them to hold hands (glue, probably, but that feels awfully unfair to them). But I'm quite happy with how it turned out, otherwise.
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