A Halloween bone crown that you can use for decoration or a costume? Um, YES! For optimal "creep" effect use real bone, but for the squeamish (or vegetarian/vegan), you can DIY it out of plastic bones from the Dollar Store.
It's chicken bones.
Skip right to the tutorial.
When I was in grade 2 or 3 my friend Susie brought her prized possession to school for show and tell. A stuffed bear named Razzmatazz. Everyone clapped wildly and wanted to hold Razzy. It was a feel good, Hallmark moment for everyone. Susie, and her cutsie bear, finally took their seat. Then I stepped out from behind my desk and walked my little feet up to the front of the class, one hand gripping a plastic bag. The slightly crumpled grocery bag held my prized possession.
The class was still on a sugar high from Susie's sweet stuffie so I waited for them to settle down. Once the class settled and I knew all eyes were on me, I reached a hand into my bag and pulled out my prized possession.
A human skull. An actual human skull.
I held it up, perched on the palm of my hand, Othello style and watched as each and every eyebrow in the room shot upwards. Except for the teacher's, whose eyebrows went in the opposite direction.
That's me! I Photoshopped a wrinkle away from the corner of my mouth!
O.K. I get it. Some of you don't wanna wear chicken bones on your head. That's O.K. This also makes a GREAT Halloween party decoration. ORRRRRR you can turn chicken bones into this bone wreath.
Table of Contents
HALLOWEEN BONE CROWN
These bone crowns look good all on their on set on a table but are at their best when resting on a skull.
How to Make a Halloween Crown (out of bones)
I've found the easiest way to make fake bones look real, is by not using fake bones. I'm not suggesting you use human bones. That's just weird. But you can save all the bones from your chicken and turkey carcasses throughout the year and use those for Halloween decorating. Which is not weird at all.
Where to get Chicken Bones
- I bet you eat rotisserie chicken the odd time don't you? Turn those carcasses into broth (here's my tutorial on making and canning chicken broth) and then save the bones! Ask your friends and family to save their carcasses for you. I actually ask my neighbours for their bones at Thanksgiving.
- High end butcher shops will sell or save chicken carcasses for you. You just have to ask them. I haven't had as much luck with grocery store butchers doing this but you can try.
- If you get a local food delivery or are a part of a CSA program they sometimes have bones and carcasses available if you ask as well.
How to Clean the Chicken Bones.
- Clean the bones of any meat. If you use them to make broth first there won't be much to clean. Scrub them with a scrubby pad or the rough side of a sponge.
- Once the bones are clean, put them in the sink with a little bleach and water. Around a cup of bleach for a sink half full of water. This lightens them and takes away the yellowish tinge they have.
- For REALLY white bones, soak them in 3% hydrogen peroxide.
How to Make the Halloween Bone Crown.
- Gather your cleaned chicken bones and plug in your hot glue gun.
- Start gluing your bones together in a circle. Put hot glue on BOTH surfaces you're gluing.
- Form your bone crown on whatever or whoever is going to wear it. The bones need to conform to the surface you're putting it on or it'll slip off. If you form it on a flat surface like a tabletop, the crown will be completely flat and it it won't fit the shape of a skull (human or fake) and will slip off.
- Let the glue dry and add extra glue and bones where you think things are shaky. The more bones you use the more stable the crown will be.
- Now make another crown of bones on top of the first one. You'll end up with two levels of bones.
- If you want to get fancy, add some bone ends around the top of the crown and add jewels.
- You're done.
** If you plan on wearing this as part of a Halloween costume a good tip is to measure the size of your noggin and then mark a circle onto a piece of plastic. For the crown around that so it'll be the right size.
Use a lot of hot glue. Don't be shy. It'll disappear once the crown is formed. You DON'T want it to fall apart while you're parading around in your award winning creepy Halloween costume.
Using shorter bones will make a better fitting crown than using huge turkey leg bones. Unless you have a MASSIVE head.
Once you finish the first circle, do another row on top.
I really love Halloween decorating. It brings me back to those carefree days of my skull wielding youth.
If you have blobs of hot glue don't worry about it. No one will notice them because they'll be busy looking at the bone crown you made and assessing your mental state.
See? Creepy but still elegant Halloween decorations. I mean, compared to plastic vomit or something.
Halloween Bone Crown.
Make this Halloween crown out of bones for a creepy finishing touch to your Halloween costume or for decoration.
Materials
- 10-15 medium sized chicken bones
Tools
- Hot glue gun and glue
Instructions
- Clean cooked chicken bones* by scraping the meat off with a knife and then scrubbing the bones clean with a scrubby pad. Make sure you scrape off any fat, marrow, etc. from inside the joints.
- Submerge bones in a sink half filled with water with 1 cup of bleach mixed in.
- Let bones soak for 30 minutes. (* for TRULY white bones see notes*)
- Allow bones to dry overnight.
- Hot glue a circle of bones together. Either place them on your fake skull to form them or measure your head and draw a circle that size on a piece of plastic. This acts as a pattern for sizing your crown.
- Repeat, adding another circle of bones on top.
- Add additional bones and jewels if you're feeling fancy.
- Let the crown set to dry.
Notes
- * If you're using raw chicken bones, boil them in water for 10 minutes before moving to step 1 of the instructions.
- Using shorter bones will make the crown easier to form. Chicken drumsticks bones work well.
- Store your crown in some sort of hard box for safe keeping throughout the year so it doesn't get damaged.
- To get the crown to stay fixed to your head glue it onto a hair band the same colour as your hair. You can also glue hair combs to the inside of it but I haven't tried this so I can't guarantee it would work.
Halloween Bone Crown Tips
- If it's to wear, mark a circle that's the size of your head on a piece of plastic and form your crown on that.
- If you're having trouble getting your bones to glue you can sand them to rough them up a little bit. But if you glue BOTH sides of the bone and let them sit before fiddling with them you shouldn't hav any problems.
- To make sure the crown stays secure on your head all night glue it to plastic headband the same colour as your hair and then just put the headband on.
- Remember this IS bone and it is only hot glued together so it's moderately fragile. Be mindful when you're wearing it.
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Nifty bone-crown idea. Looks terrific. Your captivating pic is quite 'Game of Thrones' worthy. And BTW I LOVE the zipper-face costume suggestion. As a former Funeral Director-Embalmer (yep, 4th Generation in fact) though I only worked in the field for a few years in my youth and grew up in a funeral home, I will attest to the 'realistic' impression the zipper and stage blood creates. Great fun. I do luv me some Halloween.
Hi, I really want to try this, but I have a couple questions. Does it matter if the bone marrow is removed, or is it removed when you make broth out of it?
So the instructions are great and all (and now I totally want my own bone crown), but mostly I'm dying to know details about the 2nd or 3rd grade class. How did you get a skull at that age? Who's was it? How did they die? Did your teacher arrange a meeting with your parents? Etc.
The only show and tell I vividly remember was the time in high school when I did a book report on marijuana, complete with a faux plant and demonstration pipe. Coincidentally, my teacher's eyebrows also went the opposite direction of my classmates, but at least I didn't get arrested.
LOL!! It must be a LOT of fun to be a teacher sometimes, lol. The skull was originally found by my grandfather apparently. The story is he found it around Ottawa, Canada when an area was being dug up to put in a parking lot. Who knows if that's where it really came from though! I do come from an "interesting" lineage. ~ karen!
Just woke up on a Monday morning feeling blah - this has energized my day!! Thank you! *goes on a bone hunt*
Go get em!! ~ karen
Oooo---this did me a scare! But what a great idea.....just don't wear it where your chickens can see it. Love the idea of the glued-on jewels.
You are rockin’ those smoky eyes girl!!
You look a bit like one of the Olsen twins in the photo. Love it.
I knew she resembled someone but couldn't remember who. You are spot on!
Going to share this with a friend who is obsessed with Halloween, she'll love this.
Question though, is google making you put the most recent comments on top? I love reading all the comments and reversing them makes it a bit confusing. I'll deal if it helps you of course lol, but hoping they can stay chronological. I don't care if there are old comments. They're probably funny too!
Hi Marie Anne! Well they aren't "making me", but it's "best practice". I checked around and most blogs do it with newest comments first because people usually want to see the most recent comments first, but I'm testing it out. It could return to the other way! ~ karen
I am from the old school and I prefer the see the oldest comments first. So comments should be displayed in ascending order (rather than descending). It seems to make more sense that way.
I know. I am weird.
Really enjoy your blog, Karen, and appreciate the hard work that goes into it. A few comments:
1. I was expecting a 'Game of Bones' pun, but it never came. I herein give it to you for free.
2. Othello (?) or you may be thinking of Hamlet and alas poor Yorick? (Could be wrong.)
3. This is the most I've seen you respond to comments on a single story (could be wrong, again) so it is clearly a displacement activity for doing what you are supposed to be doing - cleaning up your 50 gazillion old posts. Get back to work!
Ah, that's because this post was originally published 2 years ago and I updated it this week. So most of those comments were responded to 2 years ago. Finally - YES! Hamlet. :) ~ karen!
I never thought of using these. I want to do a like a sleigh out of them to be pulled by one of my spooky model toyhorses that I have on me. hahhah. What about turkey ones?? I do cook whole chickens in the crock pot. Also too if our building here has a turkey supper I could see if I can get them. I know the best place would be our Turkey supper at the Church. But sometimes they save them for this person to make stock with. Maybe I can ask them for one lot of them when I go to it see what they say.
Hi Karen! Yes, there are actually a lot of turkey bones in there. The bigger ones are drumsticks. Because Thanksgiving in Canada (where I'm from) is before Halloween, I asked everyone (friends, neighbours) to save me their turkey carcasses from Thanksgiving. :) ~ karen!
What a GREAT idea and I'm stealing it!!! I bought some vintage bottle brush trees at a yard sale last year and they were in an ugly gold sleigh that just got tossed on my workbench because, well, it's ugly. I cleaned and saved a slew of chicken bones last year after Karen's bone wreath/crown post to make something for this year and just dug out all my Halloween stuff yesterday. I will be testing it out as a frame to glue the bones on! Thanks Karen F!
Very cool...😎 you know I like your Halloween stuff!
You know, Shakespeare's skull is missing. Could it have made the journey across the ocean to end up in a dentist's possession??????
Ah, I can completely sympathize... as I too have a collection of bones; raccoon sculls though. 'Found pretty clean on my walks with little wiggly teeth. Anatomy studies for life drawing gave me quite the appreciation for bones and how amazingly beautiful they actually are.
And yes, finding a great beautiful scull is amazing.
Love that you raise chickens and re-use their bones. Did you make a Cuddles crown? Or a Cheez Whiz crown? Cool. How macabre, how stlylish. Waste not, want not I guess...
Those are pets...not just chickens that you eat...would you eat your pets?...Karen is much to kind and sensitive to do that...