Making Tombstones With Foam

This year we are focusing a lot more energy on the outside of the house than we ever have. Before, you would go past our house and you wouldn't even know that it was Halloween. I mean, walk IN and it was a different story but not on the outside. Last year we dipped our toes in by making our boarded up windows, dead trees and Mandrake garden.

The way we set up the trees last year was alright. We had set them up all along the hedge that made its way to the front entry. We basically held them up, used a piece of rebar to zip tie them to and voila! Well, you would think voila. The heavy winds we get and the weight of the trees proved too much for the rebar we bought. They leaned quite a bit and were very ready to be done after the season. This year we will 100% use super thick stakes so they will stand straight.

This time around we've decided to set the trees up all around and across the yard so as to make an amazing cemetery. The Springer Cemetery if you will LOL. Now, to have a cemetery the very FIRST thing you need are headstones. Today we'll be chatting about how we make them with insulation foam. Below is a step by step for how to make these awesome tombstones that will last AND stay put even with gusts of wind! 

We started with 3" insulation foam. We cut smaller blocks to make a bunch of tombstones. For this tutorial we will be going over the most basic of shapes. Kevin (the hubs) used some string that he anchored at the center point with his thumb. At the other end he had a pen and made the arch for the top of the tombstone.

He used a bandsaw to smoothly cut out the shape.

We then placed it on top of the piece that would be it's base and marked the spot with our pen so that we would know exactly where to spray our glue. After watching many tutorials and reading, we learned from our good friend Maureen that the 3M brand of glue was the best to use for keeping the foam pieces together. 

You spray BOTH sides. The bottom of the tombstone itself and the part it would adhere to. We waited 30 seconds to a minute before it was a little tacky and then stuck the two pieces together.

Worked like a charm! (UPDATE!!! Worked like a charm...until later. The 90 eats through the foam a bit so after a LOT of trial and error we recommend wither the 3M Super 77 or great stuff. You can get either the red can of great stuff or the blue, which is mostly used for doors and window casings. The blue won't expand as much but you need a way to clamp everything together or use wooden sticks to pin everything. We are using great stuff this year!)

Now THIS is the part that you want to pay attention to if you don't want to find your tombstones in the neighbor's yard. 

Kevin cut pvc pipe that was a bit longer than the length of his longest bit. He cut the ends at an angle using his bandsaw so that they would dig into the foam easier. (UPDATE: that didn't help as much as we thought, so no need to angle them.)

He marked where they would go in the foam.

Then he used his drill bit and going slowly he drilled the two holes. (UPDATE: after this season I realized that we didn't cut the pvc pipe long enough nor did we drill the holes long enough. Some ended up detaching from their foam base and fell over. Not all of them, but some. SO, I used my hot knife and went much deeper up into the tombstone, kept the same size pvc pipe but did loner rebar. Then I attached them back to their bases using great stuff. Let's cross our fingers for this season!!!)

Next we took the pvc pipe and tried using a mallet to get them flush with the bottom of the tomb base. It didn't quite work as well as we would have liked. It got it in there but stopped at a certain point.

We then took a normal hammer and it worked perfectly!!!

It helped to add the piece of foam that we had originally cut off at the bottom. That way we had a straight surface to hammer into.

Next we went to the computer to pick out our tombstone person's name and any other details. I wanted BERRY M. DEEP with a fun little detail underneath it.

We then taped the lettering on where we wanted it to be and used a pen to outline the letters. We did this quite hard to make sure it left an impression on the foam.

Kevin then outlined the letters again just so it would be easier to see when he took the dremel to it.

We bought a When Dremel off Amazon years ago and just last week got a guard for it from Home Depot. We LOVE this guard because it makes every cut and every letter the same depth AND you can see exactly where you are cutting.

 

Once we finished the lettering we took one of the most amazing products I've been introduced to this last year.....DRYLOK. Oh can I just tell you how beautiful this stuff is? It completely seals and weatherproofs ALL your projects. We used this for our boarded up windows last year. 

Here is another tombstone we did for dear old Ichabod Crane.

Hope you enjoyed that!!! Be sure to send us pics if you do it too! =)