Grave stones

Like most of our Halloween decorations, we made these several years ago.  I found the idea and directions in this book - Halloween Crafts: Eerily Elegant Decor" by Kasey Roger (who played Louise Tate on Bewitched) and Mark Wood.   I thought most of the projects in this book were just OK, but it did have a few good ideas.

We are reworking the above gravestone, since it has the most damage of the three.

These gravestones are pretty big in general.  They all measure around 3 1/2 feet tall x 2 feet wide x 5 inches deep.

Here's how we did it -

1. We sandwiched and glued 2 pieces of construction foam/sheet insulation together. Before applying the glue, make sure to carve 2 'rebar" channels on the insides of foam (sides that will be glued together).  This will be used later for display purposes. 
2. Carve your design into the headstones. For the second gravestone, we added a carved (skull shaped) piece of foam to the front; for added dimension.
3. Cover foam with a heavy layer of paper mache.
4. Once this dried thoroughly, we spray painted over the paper mache with stone/granite textured spray paint. Once this dries, we distressed the gravestones with watered down black and eerie green paints.
5. Once this dried, we sealed the crap out of them.
6. Using hot glue gun, glue moss on to areas of the front of gravestone to add an aged look.
7. To display, we pushed 2 short pieces of of rebar in the ground and slid the gravestones on to these.

These gravestones have held up really well until about 2 years ago. At that time, they sat outside for 2 days in torrential rain which was then followed by a hard freeze. They just couldn't take it & the backs cracked open.  We still use them, but they just look really bad from the back.  This year we are going to try and redo one of these, using a different method.  If it works out, we will redo the others next year. Keep your fingers crossed.....

You can also see a picture of one of our headstones in the Mr. Bones entry.

Blessings, Tracy