Thread: Question on letter carving

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Graphite paper from art supply stores and some walmarts works pretty well for transfering most images on most surfaces...for me anyway.

I am making tombstones for my Zombie Ball in August.

I bought a huge piece of the 4'x8' 2-inch thick insulation foam from Home Depot. I was going to use a 40% off coupon from one of the craft stores, but even then, it was just cheaper to buy the 4'x8' piece for $18.

Anyways...I tried my hand at a few different methods.

The first time, I created my tombstone shapes and text in Adobe Illustrator, and printed them out. I then used my craft projector to blow them up onto the foam, and then traced them with a pen. Be sure you pull off the plastic sheets from the styrofoam before you begin 'engraving' your letters. I used my wire Styro Cutter to cut them out, and used a combination of the Styro Cutter and Wood Burner tool to 'engrave' the letters. After that I painted my 'engravings' with black acrylic paint. I sprayed them with stone-finish spray paint, which surprisingly did not eat away the foam. However, this paint is NOT cheap (even with the 40% off coupon) so using it on the bare foam soaked up a lot of it, and was quite wasteful.


My next attempt, I used a yardstick to draw straight lines on the foam, and then used the projector to get the general shape and to make sure it was symetrical. Instead of projecting the letters, I printed them out the exact size I needed, and then taped the paper to the foam tombstone. I used a sharp pencil to trace over each letter on the paper, and when I was finished, I removed the paper and retraced the letters on the foam. Worked good, but it was a little hard to see the lines on certain letters. I used the Styro Cutter for the finer lines and cursive writing, and the Wood Burning tool for the regular letters and designs.

The third try, I did the same method as the second time, but used an X-Acto blade to actually cut through the paper and into the foam. This method was by far the quickest and easiest for me.

I continued to paint the 'engravings' black, but to save on the stone-finish paint, I painted the tombstones grey with acrylic paint. I couldn't find a large jar of it, so I bought an inexpensive white acrylic paint and tinted it with some black. I painted the tombstones with the grey, and then sprayed just the front of the tombstones with the stone-finish paint.


I am out of state at the moment, but when I return home, I'll probably add some black streaks to the tombstones, as well as a little bit of moss. I'll be sure to add some photos too.

So far, they look really, really good.

A Dremel probably would work better, but being that I didn't want little bits of foam everywhere, I decided to go with melting the letters.

I hope this info can be of help to someone!

I just trace right onto it.

I read a technique here on the forums after 'Ween 2008, and I did a quick test to see how it worked. It worked well enough that I'm hoping to get a few new stones this year using the technique.

Basically, after you've gotten your letters masked off on the face of the stone, hit it with a VERY, VERY, VERY light coat of spray paint. Color doesn't matter, you're going to color over it anyway.

The propellant eats away at the foam, and leaves the masked off areas intact. (I'm not joking when I say a VERY light coat of paint!)

The result is raised text in a matter of minutes. If you'd rather do engraved letters (as opposed to raised letters), just mask off the negative image. That is, mask off the entire stone, and leave your font exposed.

As for getting the letters themselves masked off nice and neatly, I've read about adhesive stick-on letters that you can get at the craft store, but I've not yet tried it. The above suggestion about using spray adhesive has gotten my juices flowing though, and I'm eager to see the results. If it works well, you could kick out a dozen raw, unpainted, unfinished but carved stones easily within an hour.