RedThreadDIY

I was originally going to follow the Lowe’s tombstone tutorial to create my very own scary tombstones, but after starting I found that there were much easier ways to make an awesome tombstone setup without a ton of foamboard and extra time. So – here is the Halloween Tombstone Tutorial – RedThread style!

I made these AWESOME light-up ghost figures in a previous tutorial. They are SUPER easy and fun to make!

Check out my collection of links for other fun outdoor Halloween decoration ideas!

Materials Needed:

• Foamboard (I used a 1″ pink insulation foamboard sheet from Home Depot, which only cost me around $12. I made all 7 of my tombstones from that one sheet, with leftovers!)
• Serrated Knife (for cutting out the tombstone shapes.)
• X-Acto Knife (for carving the tombstone names and/or designs in the foamboard.)
• Spray Paint Primer (I used Rust-Oleum Painter’s Touch Ultra Cover 2X Coverage Primer – Gray, which cost around $3. We bought 2 and used 2. Don’t go too cheap on your primer! Cheap primers take a ton more time, and a lot of coats to cover the pink foamboard. It would actually cost you more using the cheap stuff, since you’d have to go through so many more cans to get the coverage you want)
• Hot Glue Gun
• Hand Saw
• Something to cut cheap wood with
• Hammer
• Wooden Paint Stirring Sticks (Home Depot offers these for free). Grab 2 for each tombstone to be safe.
• Spray Paint (Any color you want your tombstones to be! If you’re happy with how the primer looks, just leave it as is. I did this on a couple of the tombstones! You can get an array of cheap spray paint colors for $1 each at Home Depot or Wal-Mart)

Most of these materials I already had, so I only needed to buy the foamboard and the primer. Pretty awesome result for $20 and my time, right? Onto the instructions!

Step 1: With a pen or pencil, lightly draw your tombstone shapes onto the foamboard. I made straight lines with a T-Square (You can use a ruler and eye it!), and made rounded top shapes with a dinner plate.

You can also print out Lowe’s cutting diagrams for examples here. I printed these out really small and used them as a guide only. I avoided the bases and most 3-D effects. If this link stops working, feel free to contact me, as I’ve saved the PDF file and can send it to you.

There are also tombstone templates available here, which gives you wider variety.

Step 2: Once you’re satisfied with the shapes made, take a serrated knife, and start cutting! It’s easiest if you cut in a back and forth motion, rather than just trying to slice the foamboard. I tried a box cutter, but it made things very difficult. I don’t recommend a box cutter!

If you do have a jigsaw, it would probably be the easiest to use that. Since I don’t have one, the knife worked out just fine.

Below are the outcomes of cutting with a serrated knife:

Step 3: I experimented with a 3-D tombstone. To make a 3-D looking tombstone, cut out a normal tombstone (straight edges would be easiest) and then cut out 3 inch wide, long strips of foamboard. Match them up the best you can, and hot glue them to the tombstone once you feel that they are cut properly to fit the tombstone shape. I then waterproof caulked the seams for an even sturdier result.

Step 4: For a professional look, use a computer to print the desired name you want. I used different sizes of Palatino font, depending on the size of my tombstones. My sizes varied from 150 pt. to 300 pt font. I printed out several copies until I could decide which size font was best for each tombstone. There are so many different humorous tombstone names. I’ll include as many as I can find and list them at the bottom of this tutorial!

Step 5: Using tape, attach paper with desired name to the foamboard.

Step 6: Using a ballpoint pen, trace over the letters with enough pressure to cause an impression in the foam.

Photo Credit: Lowe's Creative Ideas

Step 7: Remove the paper. Using an X-acto knife, cut the foamboard inside the letters at 45 degree angles. Then, carve out the excess foam.

Photo Credit: Lowe's Creative Ideas

Step 8: If wanting to make cracks in your tombstones, score the foam with your X-acto knife. If wanting to cut out a shape in your tombstones, simply trace the shape that you want in pencil and cut directly through the foamboard. Examples of the finished look of these are below:

Step 9: Spray paint your tombstones with the primer! Be sure to have scrap cardboard or newspaper underneath your tombstones when using primer and spray painting in order to save your grass or cement! Use a back and forth, steady motion when priming and spray painting. Be sure to check out the video below if you don’t have a lot of experience. Let it dry, and then flip it over to prime the other side. Amazingly, this went pretty fast and the primer dried within 5 minutes. After the primer is on, you can choose to use spray paint for different effects, but the gray primer will also look fine by itself.

• Use the primer FIRST! Don’t only use spray paint. It will take a ton of cans to cover the foamboard color. Also, the spray paint without primer burns through the foamboard, creating an icky effect.
• Make sure that you are spraying at least 10 inches away from the tombstone. If you spray too close or for too long in the same place with the primer or spray paint, it will also burn through the foamboard.

Foamboard Burning

Before

During

After

Optional: Add different effects with different colors of spray paint  to your primed tombstones by lightly spraying on the color.

Step 10: Make stakes for your tombstones. These will be hot glued into your tombstones to make them stick into the ground! Take one paint stick and cut it in half with a saw. Then take a pair of wire cutters to cut off some of the wood to turn them into stakes. You can really use anything to cut them, as long as you can cut them at an angle. Make at least two stakes for each tombstone. If you have a huge tombstone, I recommend making three stakes for it. The picture below should explain it all:

Step 11: In this step – you need to make slots in your tombstones to be able to hold the stakes that you have made. I tried cutting out the holes, but found it very difficult. So, I used a butter knife that didn’t match any of our other silverware and sacrificed it. Over an open fire, I heated up the knife and stuck it right through the foamboard, as deep as I needed the stakes to go into. The picture and the video do a better job of explaining this below:

Step 12: Using a hot glue gun, secure the stakes into the holes you just made.

Step 13: When the glue dries, usually within 10 minutes, arrange your tombstones in your front yard. I live in Michigan, so the ground was pretty hard. When I tried to push them into the ground, I made the stakes go further into the tombstones. You do NOT want this! To fix the problem, I laid out the tombstones where I wanted them, and took an unused stake to hammer into the ground, and then lifted it out. When doing this, I could push the tombstones into my pre-made holes in the ground easily without cracking them.  To further make sure that the tombstones don’t fly away, you may want to surround them with a few heavy rocks, skulls, or in my case, a worthless chair hidden behind the largest tombstone sandwiched with the skeleton that we secured to the ground!

Step 14: Finished! Enjoy your awesome new tombstones. They RULE!

Click here to view my entire picture set on flickr.

Questions? Comments? More fun tombstone names? Other ideas? Make a set of your own? Let me know!

Some Tombstone Name Options: