Sips & Skulls – DIY Sugar Skulls & Wine Party

Good morning and happy Tuesday!! I am feeling super excited today because I managed to pull off a successful DIY party. If you’ve been following along for a while you may know that I started out as a DIY blogger. I loved doing it myself and sharing my creations with others. Something about crafting and DIY just making me so happy and so calm.  But, I’ve kinda gotten away from that as my blog has evolved to show more of me. I needed a reason to bring it back and share it with others, so that is how Sips & Skulls was born! 

Sips & Skulls was my take on painting with a twist! I live in a [kinda] tiny condo and I managed to fit 10 girls around a table for a night of wine and DIY.  We had wine, ceramic skulls and all different supplies to create our own Sugar Skulls – which they got to later take home. 

Personally, I loved hosting this party because I got to bring girls together for an “untraditional” party or reason. I also did a ton of research because I wanted my Day of The Dead theme to be accurate AF. 

How I pulled off Sips & Skulls:

The Invite: Every party starts with a list of people who need to be invited. I am a simple kinda gal, so I opted to create my own and send it out digitally. I used Canva to create the invite and give it my own little touch. I love the fonts and different customizations. This also kinda set the tone for me and the “branding” of the party. Because, duh I’m a blogger everything has to make sense visually. 

The Vision Board: Duh, I’m a blogger. Haha, JK but truly I am a major fan of vision/mood boards. I realize I am a visual learner so by pulling everything I wanted to purchase for the decor and adding it to my mood board made it super easy for my to stick to a color scheme and make sure the decor would match. 

The Crafts: This is probably the coolest part.  Oriental Trading supplied all of the crafts for this party. I was beyond stoked because growing up, my mother always ordered from there for our party decor and crafts to make invites. Therefore, I was excited to be able to work with them. All the supplies I ordered were, all together, under $75  – meaning you can seriously order supplies and host this type of party with a minimal budget. They also made it pretty easy to know what supplies I would need with their pre-made sections for specific crafts. Check Oriental Trading out to see exactly what I’m talking about. 

I ordered 12 ceramic skulls, paint brushes, 32 sharpie markers, 6 bottles of acrylic paint, jewels, paper flowers, glue dots and glitter. I tried to keep it simple! 

In addition to crafts I just had to bring in my temporary tattoos from Momentary Ink. I was Beyond excited to put “Bone Yard” across my knuckles and feel like a badda$$ the whole night.  They offer so many tattoos for you to “try out” before you commit and I just couldn’t resist the kind of tattoo I would never actually get. Because, that’s fun right? 

The Decor: Ahh the best part (pretty sure I have said that about every part by now..)! I wanted this to be bright vibrant colors, but still pretty minimal like my style. So, I opted to mostly use the craft supplies as decorations for the center piece which I laid out across the table. Using a cake stand for the center to layer the skulls on and a ton of greenery to balance out the color. How adorable is that Mexican Table Runner and DIY Sugar Skull drink stirs?!

Also, I brought in a bar cart and decorated the wall behind it using hanging flower streamers that I made with fresh carnations (Tutorial to come!).  Since I did research, I knew that in a traditional DOTD celebration, they decorate arches with marigolds to create a beautiful space for the guests to leave their ofrendas ( the food and wine they brought for the dead).  This translated to fresh flowers to hang around the wine! 

The Food: This is the part I kinda stressed over the most, but I had a few suggestions to just have my guests bring their favorite food. That worked like a charm, so I just needed to supply the wine and the craft supplies and everyone was happy. 

The Wine:  Sips & Skulls was not complete without my delivery of wine from Winc! Winc is a monthly delivery service that allows you to choose from a selection of wine to be delivered to you monthly. Genius right? I went right online, ordered the kind of wine I knew my guests would enjoy (& that was on theme 😉 ) to have it here in time for the party. I opted for Loves Me Not Rose for a few reasons. Winc does a great job at displayed their wine selections so I knew this wine was sweet, but not too sweet and paired well with Mexican food. Helloooo how could I not choose it? 

Grab $20 off your order with Winc if you’d like to give it a try! 

Now, I will continue to use their service to try out new wine monthly because the bottles are pretty reasonably priced and typically cannot find in the stores. 

Wow, I feel like I tried really hard to keep this party simple, and for the most part it was. But writing this made me realize I put  a lot into it! 

Let me know what you thought in the comments below!