Crafting Tombstones for the yard

 Every year for halloween I try to make something new for the yard. When I first moved into the house it was some cardboard box tombstones. i made covered them in some homemade monstermud and painted cute sayings on them. For 5 years they've served me well, but after 5 years they're showing their age... There's only so much one can do with a cardboard box that gets left outside for a month at a time every year...

After the tombstones, I made a scarecrow, and then a coffin made from a stack of pallets, and last year I made a giant spider. With each of these projects I've learned something new, and also managed to make something unique. The other neighbors who put out halloween decorations are putting out the things that you can buy at Home Depot, Lowe's, or Spirit Halloween. My stuff is unique. It isn't as polished as theirs but it's mine, and I love it. 

Also, I can't believe I never posted about making any of these before... 

This year, I wanted to replace, or at least add some fancier sturdier tombstones. I had a bunch of scrap pink foam insulation leftover from insulating the attic, and so went to work. I had one big piece of foam in particular, and chopped it into 6 relatively large slabs. These would form the basis of the tombstones. 

 

Then I carved out channels on them for PVC pipe that would be used to secure them in place on the lawn, though not deep enough, and I had to go back to make them deeper.  

 

Of course I didn't want to add a bunch of rectangular slabs to the yard since I already had 8 of the cardboard boxes serving that purpose. Using some scrap cardboard I measured out the slab size onto it and then sketched out some ideas. 

 

A little late into the project I decided that I wanted to scribe the tombstones with... something. I settled on authors and actors important to Halloween. So I figured out who I wanted, and some good quotes from them (or their characters, or about their characters) wrote them all up and printed it out at the library. Of course I also needed a tool to do it. I could have just used my exacto, but time was running short. I really should have started this early in September... so I ordered a rotary tool. 

 

Thankfully the kid has some weekend activities that keep him busy, giving me time to try to knock these out. Not that the weather was super cooperative. It was cold, but at least it wasn't raining. And really it was a wonderful sort of autumn cold. Bracing, invigorating even. 

 

Not bad, but too small... 

 

After scribing the first one, I decided that I needed to reprint the papers with a bigger font. So I biked back to the library and took care of that, and then came back to finish them.  

 
I didn't expect the foam to melt and make the paper stick to them, but it did. Not a big problem, as the paper came off easily enough with a wet wash cloth. 

 At this point it was time to glue in the pipes and back supports, and for the 2 author stones, the frames. Something I didn't know was that different calk guns are rated for different materials, and the one I had was NOT rated for adhesive. Turns out you can break a calk gun squeezing it too hard.. So I had to make an emergency trip to Lowe's... Which actually worked out for the best. The craft gods blessed me with a gallon of weather seal premixed dark grey paint which normally goes for about $63... for $15!!

Originally I was planning on using scrap foam to make the backing to help hold the pipes in place, but I decided that the old scrap pallet wood  could do the job, and help add some needed extra weight to the stones. 

 Then of course it was time to paint! 

I find myself wondering if someone else asked for this, didn't pick it up, and was hoping to get it discounted in a day or 3? Whatever the cause, this was a fantastic find for me. 

 Please ignore the messy garage... The final step was to paint the inscriptions with black paint to make them more readable. 

I would love to get these more weathered, more decorated, but for this year, with less than 2 weeks to Halloween, I felt it was more important to get them out into the yard. There's always next year to add to the pile, and then weather them all together. Also I still have a LOT of the paint left over which will be great for more yard decorations, or regular gaming terrain. 

 And here they are all set up in the yard with the old ones.