How to Make Skull Beads and Charms

These simple skulls are made out of modeling clay (Fimo or Sculpey), and can be made any color you want. The ones I did here are a bone color. Towards the end, you can either put a hole in them to use as beads, or you can sink a metal post in the top, letting them be used as charms. The best part about these is, once you get into the swing of things, you can make one in about 3 minutes with about 15 cents worth of clay. This makes them a cheap alternative to mass manufactured plastic beads, which are frequently sold between 50 cents and a dollar as novelty beads. I especially like that they even feel a little bit like bone.

Shopping List

Modeling clay. For my bone colored ones, I used white (Fimo soft shade 0) and caramel (Fimo soft shade 7).
A needle or pin
An implement with a bluntly pointed end. I used a clay tool, but a cheap pen (with no ink) could be used in a pinch.

Creating the Skulls

Forming the skull shapes and adding the facial features is much easier to show in pictures. The photos below show how to create the shapes needed. The first try usually looks pretty bleh, but the second try gets much better (so don't give up). If you mess up the first try, just knead the clay a bit and start over.

I want to apologize up front about the picture quality. My camera hates small things.

Steps by Picture

I combined a pinch of brown (shown at right) with two bars worth of white to get the slightly off white and weathered color I used. This was enough clay to make 3 skulls.

Then I rolled the ball between my hands one last time to make it slightly oblong, and pressed on the "front" of it to give it slightly flattened face.

I turned the clay and sunk my thumbnail into the back of it, slightly lower than halfway down. I used my thumbnail because it forms a natural arc of just the right size for these, but using a needle to do it would work well too..

It's barely visible, but here's the mark this left. Carefully smooth the indentation into a curve. This is the curve at the back base of your skull, where it turns into your neck.

The curve from another angle. I smoothed it just using my fingertips.

Then take the jaw area and squeeze it into a slight point. Your index finger should rest on the "face" and your thumb shouldn't quite reach to the skull base curve we already made.

Then, turn the face of the bead towards you, and grasp it by the cheeks. Squeeze again, carefully, to make a taper for the chin.

Here's the bead after the cheeks were squeezed. You might want to re-check the above steps, to see if any angles got squeezed out of shape and fix them if necessary.

When happy with the shape of the skull, stick a needle in its eye.

Add another eye and draw a downward facing V for the nose with the needle. Don't put the eyes and nose too close together.

Draw a straight line across the bottom of the jaw, for the mouth. Go over the line 4 or 5 times with the needle, until it's more like a cut. The cut should start to open, making it look like a slightly gaping jaw.

You can leave it with the slightly goofy looking mouth above, or add teeth. Draw the teeth with the needle, on both the top and bottom jaw. Smooth down any clay bumps you've created around the teeth or at the sides of the mouth.

Take the needle back to the eye, and move it in a circle, enlarging the eye.

Take the clay implement or pen (pictured below), and stick it in the enlarged eye. This will enlarge it further and should help smoth down some rough edges. Do this for both eyes.

Stick the implement in the eye and lightly swing the handle towards the forehead, so the tool pushes out cheekbones from inside the eye. Don't push too hard--this is supposed to be a subtle effect.

This is the face from another angle, showing you the finished cheekbone.

Finished skulls. I also stuck a needle through the heads so I can string them as beads, but that picture completely didn't turn out. After this, just stick the clay in the oven going by the manufacturer's instructions.