20 Intriguing Sugar Skull Tattoos

Sugar skull tattoos, t-shirts, bags and smartphone cases with sugar skulls on them, stickers and other decorations – those amazingly looking skulls are staring at us from everywhere and their popularity is growing fast. Make-up artists paint faces of models in photo shootings to resemble sugar skulls and we see them as something amazing, new kind of a skull design that doesn’t look frightening at all like we have discovered something new just a decade ago.

Sugar skull tattoo meaning reaches far into history. On the night of 31st of October when others celebrate Halloween every year in Mexico after midnight starts holiday related to the Day of the Dead that is a traditional festival going on also on 1st and 2nd of November. This is a time to honour dead remembering them, making altars for them, decorating gravestones and offering food and gifts to spirits of the dead. Next to rich altars and colourful decorations, skeletons and skulls are symbols of this festivity. Home-made sugar skulls are traditional sweets of this celebration.

They are white, richly decorated with bright colours, and are offered to both - dead and alive. Bigger skulls symbolize adults, but smaller ones – children. These candy skulls are opposite to what people are used to see in Western cultures: they are happy, smiling and even laughing, names of the dead or receivers can be written on these skulls and plenty of bright colours make joyful these small sugary candies and big, glittery sugar skull decorations with crowns and hats. People celebrating the festival also paint their faces to resemble with these skulls. These traditions tell that live people don’t have to be scared of departed souls. In place of being frightened and sad, we can show them our honour and be happy for their lives keeping and sharing good memories about them. These traditions are more than 2 000 years old and the idea is celebrating death not crying for it because after death comes rebirth what means getting out of our illusory world and rising spirit into new heights.

First of all, Mexican sugar skull tattoo stands for Mexico with its culture, traditions and past ancestries. Secondly, they show the honour for the dead and symbolize spiritual transference.
Sugar skull tattoos look truly beautiful, and they are not just a girly fantasy of trying to make a skull look less frightening. Not just skulls, many people also tattoo faces of their loved ones painted in sugar skull decorations on their own bodies, just like in Mexican Day of the Dead – to show honour and joy for spirit’s release to a better world.