Digital Toolbox
- Adobe ColorUse the Color Wheel to create harmonious colors that make a palette. Choose your base color, then select from a variety of color harmonies like analogous, triadic, complementary, and more to create beautiful designs.
- CanvaCanva is a free-to-use online graphic design tool. Use it to create social media posts, presentations, posters, videos, logos and more.
- Rhyme BrainNeed help finding words that rhyme?
- Smithsonian Open AccessHere you can download, share, and reuse millions of the Smithsonian’s images. This includes images and data from across the Smithsonian’s 19 museums, nine research centers, libraries, archives, and the National Zoo.
Things to Do
- 39 Party Foods To Make For A Dia De Los Muertos CelebrationFrom Delish, food to honor and celebrate loved ones.
- The Best Dia de Los Muertos Food for Your Day of the Dead CelebrationRecipes from Taste of Home.
- Day of the Dead RecipesTen recipes for the Day of the Dead.
- Día de los MuertosRecipes from the company Cacique.
- How to Make Sugar SkullsCan you eat Sugar Skulls?
The ingredients in Sugar Skulls will not make you sick, with the exception of added decorations. However, after all the handling in making them, they aren’t very clean. They are for decorative purposes only.
- Flores de PapelHow to make Tissue Paper Flowers from the Mexican Museum.
- How to make papel picadoTissue-paper cuts outs symbolize the concurrence between death and life. Cutting paper instructions provided by the National Museum of Mexican Art.
- Ritual and El Día de los Muertos: A Day of the Dead Curriculum Handbook for TeachersPublished in 1988, from the Education Department of the Mexican Museum. Includes Day of the Dead Crafts.
25 Latino Craft Projects by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780838908334Publication Date: 2003-01-01Chapter 5 has instructions for making a Calavera Mask, a Day of the Dead Skull, Day of the Dead Papel Picado, a Skeleton Puppet and children's literature recommendations.
Calaveras
The literary calaveras are short, rhyming poems, usually composed of four to twelves lines whose verse mocks the victim’s perceived weaknesses. These poems originated with printmaker and artist José Guadalupe Posada, who published intricately-designed skeleton illustrations. Each skull was designed in the likeness of a famous politician or prominent person and was accompanied by a satirical poem. The poems included jokes about subjects’ character, their limited abilities in death, and the powers and leisure activities they can no longer enjoy.
How to write literary calaveras for Día de Muertos
1. Pick someone—or something—to eulogize.
Important note: They should not actually be dead. You can write about a politician or famous person or your best friend or an object on your desk.
Here’s an example by Hallmark Writer Dan T.:
El Mariachi
In las plazas grandes and cozy small bars,
Mariachis are famous for playing guitars.
The most hateful critic finds himself compliant
When hearing guitars which are really quite giant.
“Bigger is better!” the musicians say.
So mas y mas grow the guitars that they play.
And that’s where they found Juan, a guitar big and wide
Fell on him and crushed him, and that’s how he died.
2. Introduce the subject of your calavera poem.
Why will the subject die? Are they behaving badly? Making poor choices? Minding their own business?
Hallmark Writer Keely C. lets us know right from the start that things are not going well for her subject.
Death of Manners
She met her cruel end at a dinner with “friends.”
Not one of them RSVP’d.
She felt all alone as they stared at their phones
and double-dipped chips out of greed.
Loud calls were taken, politeness forsaken.
Their language was not safe for work.
She felt ill at ease when not one uttered “Please.”
In short, they were all being jerks.
There was fingernail clipping and eye-contact-skipping.
With mouths full, the company talked.
No “thank-you” was spoken, and Manners, heartbroken,
keeled over and croaked from pure shock!
3. Decide how they meet La Muerte.
How will Death arrive in this literary calavera? Will it be the result of their hobby or occupation? Their personality? Or will they perish as the result of a really bad pun, as in this example by another Hallmark writer?
Cervezas
Down at the cantina,
they’re shedding big tears—
in mourning because
someone killed a few beers.
From Hallmark: How to write literary calaveras for Día de Muertos
The Calaveras of Don Moisés Espino Del Castillo by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781611926989Publication Date: 2015-04-30The "Calaveras" of Don Moisés Espino del Castillo is a collection of "calaveras," folk poetry in the Mexican tradition of Day of the Dead celebrations, which satirizes public figures, reminding them that their time on earth is limited despite their fame. Moisés Espino was a master of the genre. Compiled and edited by University of Texas at San Antonio professor Ellen Clark, this eBook contains Espino's complete collection.
