I want to preface this with it turned out amazingly, but only for a short period of time.
I started prepping for the project 2 days ago. I boiled a large vat of water and poured about 4 1/2 small boxes of borax in (about $4.50 each where I live) along with some purple food coloring. made sure all the borax is dissolved in the water then I took my clean deer skull, and suspended it from a grill sized spatula (I had to get creative with what I had available (✿◠‿◠) ) and lowered it into the borax mix.
I let the skull sit in the mixture for a little over 24 hours. The crystals that formed were absolutely beautiful.
I had to let that sit and dry for another 24 hours.
The antlers were already colored purple when I obtained her, so after the dip I decided to embellish them with silver leaf paper. I also decided to go with a protection sigil.
I loved how this one turned out.
fast forward a month or so, even after using a protective spray coating, most of the crystals on the outside of the skull sluffed and crumbled off. The only crystals left are the ones in the nasal passages and other small spaces.