Halloween Tombstones

For my materials, I used one inch thick foam hardboard insulation that I picked up from the big box store. If they had two inch stuff in stock, I would have got that instead. I guess you could also use plywood, it’ll just take longer and you’ll have to change things up. If you really only want to make one or two then most places usually sell smaller two foot by 2 foot pieces but they were around $5 where the full sheet was about $20. (No brainier here..)

I cut 12 pieces out of a that measured about 24×16-inches each. To do this, you can use a straight edge and a sharp utility knife, hack saw, fire or even karate to cut your board down to size, or you could just do what I did by quickly and accurately cutting it up using a table saw.

You’ll probably want all of the separate Easel projects. The Inventables project site only permits me to link to one project video so here’s the rest.

Tomstone 1
Tomstone 2
Tomstone 3
Tomstone 4
Tomstone 5

You’ll want to double check the measurements but these project files should pretty much be good to go. Using the speed, depth of cut and an 1/8" bit, each of these tombstones took about 20 minutes to carve out.

No matter what method you choose to carve out the design, I’m sure you’ll have some clean up to do. In my case, the router bit left a bunch of little “fuzzies” that I really didn’t want to sand. Fortunately for me, foam melts when heat is applied! (unless you used plywood.. poor person.) I used my heat gun to melt away all of the little “fuzzies” and got the added bonus of making the tombstone look more weathered! Perfect!

The plan here is to paint the letters first and then come back with a hard foam roller and paint the top. I know what you’re thinking… spray paint would be perfect for this! Unfortunately, the chemicals in spray paint will melt the foam and you’ll get somewhat unpredictable results. I would say who can’t use more “weathering” but the paint really doesn’t stick all that well anyways. Instead of spray paint, I used an air brush to color all of the carved out parts black and then came back with a stiff foam roller and painted the tops a “Stone Grey” color. I had to use a small brush to get the inside corners and some of the finer points. After the grey was dry, I came back with the air brush using it at a distance and added depth and more “weathering”.

Depending on where these will be going, you might have to come up with different solutions for installation.
Mine ended up in the grass so I just cannibalized a couple wire hangers, straighten them out and cut them into roughly seven-inch pieces. ofThen sticking them half in the ground and stabbing the tombstone on top the other half worked great. If you live in an area that gets high wind then you may want to use larger pieces.

If you’re going to be placing them on concrete like my friend did, you may want to just glue or tape them to a piece of two-by-four to weight it down.

Now just sit back and enjoy all of the great looks they get on Halloween night!