Tombstones & Graveyards
A graveyard will be one of many focal points of any haunt. One of the handy features of the
graveyard is that it can be on display for the entire month of October attracting attention for your
fateful day. Your graveyard scene is one of the most fun to create and offers plenty of opportunity for
creativity. Some of my suggestions are below.
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When considering material options for headstone construction you have several directions to go. (I have tried
several) First, you can cut your "stones" out of wood,(OSB or Plywood). This will give you a very durable
and long lasting product, but OSB can look cheesy, and plywood is expensive. If you reference the graveyard
picture below, you can see the "stones" I made out of OSB. They have served me well but are being retired as
of the end of Halloween 2005. Second, you can purchase Styrofoam or resin tombstones. They certainly
contain a lot of detail but can be very fragile as I found out when I opened the box with my $15.00 resin
tombstone shattered. Third, you can make them out of extruded foam board and add your own creative spirit.
As you look at the graveyard scene below you can see My OSB tombstone creations. They showed up very
well at night, and were very durable. During daylight viewing however, they look rather cheesy. They also
took a lot of effort to cut out paint and letter.
If you look at Pics #2, #3, and #5 you will see the pair of tombstones I bought at Menards for only $7.00 a
pair. Very reasonable for Styrofoam, they were just a plain grey color and somewhat fragile, but they had
some great shape and detail. The first thing I did was trace the shape of the "stone" onto a scrap piece of 1/2"
foam board and cut this out just a bit larger than the "stone" was. In the center of the new foam board piece I
cut out a 3/4" wide strip about 12" long from bottom towards top. Now I glue the two sections together using
PL300 Foam board adhesive. (Pic #4) (The PL300 comes in tubes and you will need a standard caulking gun
to apply it) Once it cured, I sanded the foam board to the exact shape of the original "stone". I also glued in a
section of 1/2" PVC pipe which will slide very nicely over a piece of 1/2" rebar. (Pic #2, this is much easier
than pounding in wood stakes and screwing your work onto the stake) Finally, using flat black and flat gray
latex paint I redid the entire tombstone to look as you see it below. The Foam board adds a lot more strength
and the extra depth of the piece makes it look more real. The skull and angels tombstone detail came flying out
when I painted most of the gray areas black. (I used some artist brushes to get into the finer areas of the pieces.)
This Off season I intend to create several new extruded foam versions of my original tombstones and eliminate
the old wood ones.
Note: Use only latex paints on Styrofoam or Extruded foam board as oil based paints will melt the material.
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This is one of the new pieces I did this year. I
used stencils to lay out the words and then
routed them in with the Dremel tool. The RIP I
layed out on my PC then cut and pasted the
different sized letters onto a different sheet and
copied that on to a sheet of 110lb heavy paper.
I then taped this to the Foam board and used an
Xacto knife to trace out the letters.
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Here you can see the layout lines and how I set the
lettering. I use stencils and a black sharpee to
color the letters in. Now I will rout the lettering and
then glue my additional Foam board pieces to give
the overall tombstone some depth. I use 11/2 inch
extruded Foam board. A skull will be glued in
place under the RIP.
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This is what these three store bought headstones became using a
controllable soldering iron.
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All of the above stones are about 3 feet tall and from 18 to 26 inches wide.
I used 1 1/2" extruded foam board and glued additional pieces together for
more depth and shape. (I use exterior wood glue which bonds very well in
fact better than the PL300 foam board adhesive!) The one to the left is
one I purchased and then doctored to make more readable. In all cases I
drilled a 3/4 inch hole in the bases and glued in 1/2" PVC pipe. I use 2'
lengths of 3/8" rebar in the ground for support.
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