At the same time as the Day of the Dead celebration, we chose the winners for our Day of the Dead Sugar Skull Contest. We cannot deny that the sugar skull face paint design has been a staple design during this Halloween season.

Among the 70 amazing entries, two have been awarded our Voters Pick and Judges Pick awards! And we can say that they’re both deserving of the recognition!

Voters Pick – Day Of The Dead Sugar Skull

The design which received the highest number of votes is the handiwork of Valerie Jerue’s creativity! Face painting for over a year now, Valerie has made face painting her profession. She’s been in birthday parties, festivals and fundraising events.

She always loved painting sugar skulls but she enhanced the design by stitching different parts of the sugar skull on her face. An idea the voters and us, in FacePaint.com, completely agree.

Here are some of the works Valerie shared with us:

Judges Pick – Blue Morpho Butterfly Sugar Skull

Our Judges Pick design that won the $100 grand prize is a design birthed by the artistic hands of a professional face painter in New York City – Lenore Koppelman! Being a professional of two (2) years, Lenore she’s experienced a lot of ups and downs when it comes to her craft and the industry of face painting but that didn’t hinder her to hone her skills. With the help of tutorial videos, seminars, conventions, workshops and a lot of practice, she has became the winner we have come to know today! Lenore is also the owner of the “The Cheeky Chipmunk” face and body painting services in New York City.

Blue Morpho Butterfly Sugar Skull by Lenore Koppelman

We asked Lenore what her inspiration is for doing the Blue Morpho Butterfly Sugar Skull design. According to her, two people inspired her to make this design. The said two inspirations are her father and mother.

Her father inherited a framed blue morpho butterfly which he hanged on their wall. Lenore, being a daddy’s girl, constantly bonded with her dad just admiring the blue morpho butterfly on their wall.

Lenore: “If anything, those tiny imperfections only added to her natural beauty. Dad pointed that out to me, too. It hung proudly on the wall in our home, and whenever I came home after having been teased at school, hot tears streaming down my face, he would sit me on his lap and point out that butterfly up on the wall… and I instantly felt better. “

The other half of the design’s inspiration is Lenore’s mother who loved her roses in her garden especially the enormous blood-red cabbage-roses.

We are touched by the fact that she did this design to honor the biggest inspirations in her life. For that, we are honored as well!

Here are some of the other works Lenore shared with us:

Halloween Selfie Contest

We would like to thank everyone who participated in our Day of the Dead Sugar Skull contest. We are thankful for the support and the dozens of creativity you all poured in our contest page! This just proves that creativity and artistry is one of the strongest qualities we have as face painters!

Meanwhile, we would like to invite you all again to join our new contest for the month of November – the Spooky & Scary Halloween Selfie Contest! Check out the contest guidelines here.