Dia de los Muertos/Day of the Dead- Celebrations and Sugar Skulls Part 2

The Dia de los Muertos event at the Hollywood Forever cemetery was one of the coolest cultural events I have ever been to. There were AMAZING altars built and assembled by awesomely creative people, delicious food, vendors vending tons of things I wanted to buy, and some sweet artwork as well.

I am definitely planning to attend this event again next year. And we will for sure be going back a bit wiser on how to best navigate the whole thing. We live about 45 minutes to an hour away from Hollywood, and we left our apartment at about 6:15pm. We didn't make it inside of the cemetery until about 9pm. We got a little bit of traffic on the freeway, but where it really got crazy was probably a quarter of a mile from our exit. It took about a half an hour just to make it to the stop light at the exit. The traffic on the main street in front of the cemetery was NUTS. By the time we made it through that mess, we still had to cruise for a parking spot, which was about a mile away from the venue. SOOOOO... next year, I think we'll leave a lot earlier in the afternoon, approach the location from a different exit, and purchase our tickets in advance. We had meant to buy our tickets online before we left, but sales had closed the day of.

Despite all of the craziness, we had SUCH a good time! Let's check out some sweet photos now...

Dia de los Muertos/Day of the Dead- Celebrations and Sugar Skulls Part 1

When I was in college at Arizona State, I was introduced to the Dia de los Muertos/Day of the Dead tradition in a Chicana/o Studies class. One of our projects was to make little altars out of matchboxes. We also had to attend the Day of the Dead exhibit in the Anthropology musuem on campus. It was one of the best classes I ever took. It was a real introduction to a culture- my own culture- that I had never really been aware of before. I ended up adding on Chicana/o Studies as my double major because I enjoyed the class so much.

I credit this class as being the beginning of my love of all that is DOD. In a later year at ASU I participated in the same exhibit at the on-campus museum by entering a paper collage/mosaic piece. SO! I obviously was very much inspired :-) I especially love sugar skulls, and I have them decorating lots of spaces in my apartment. This year we attended the Day of the Dead event at the Hollywood Forever cemetery in LA and it was SO MUCH more than I expected it to be! We painted our faces - well half of our faces - for this event and for the HARD Day of the Dead event (long story short, the event was crazy disorganized, music was good but we are never going to a HARD event again.) I can't believe I'd never painted my face before! It was a lot of fun. 

And now... our badass sugar skull faces!! :-D

Prepping for the evening

I used Tulip face paints and I LOVED them. I bought an assorted pack from Michael's as well as a larger sized white and black. They're super easy to use, and I used make-up sponges to apply them. They are activated by water so I just wet my sponges or brushes and swirled them around in the paint. They washed off really easily with water and just a touch of soap.

Etsy purchase for the win!

I was at work today doing 20 things at once, including tracking an Etsy package I was expecting any day now. Dude. Love the feeling of clicking on that tracking number and seeing "Delivered" pop up. Hells yessss!!!

If my blog title hadn't already given it away, lemme just say that I LOVE, with large capital letters, sugar skulls.  

I majored in Chicana/o Studies in college, and even though I'm Mexican-American, I didn't know a lot about my culture before college. So what better way to learn than by majoring in the dang thing?! :-)

So I learned about the history of Mexican people in the United States, 

Chicana/os, Xicana@s, and the like. 

I really developed an interest in the tradition of Dia de los Muertos, and all that the holiday/day of celebration/remembrance involves. Including sugar skulls! Our kitchen is adorned with sugar skull decor and I always have an eye out for sweet sugar skull accessories, decorations, and well, pretty much anything!

If you've never checked out Etsy (how could that be possible?!?! lol) I would most def recommend you check out this dude- Jose Pulido. His shop's name is Mis Nopales Art, and if you like sugar skulls or Chicano pop art, you should take a look at his stuff! (Check out my Paul Frank Macbook cover in the background. Hehehe)