Thread: Tombstone and graveyard progress

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Well I thought it was time to post some pics of my tombstones in progress and my graveyard so far. I had my girlfriend, her mom, and 2 close friends come over and all make tombstones with me. This year the graveyard will be much better and fuller!

Here is a link to my halloween picture album on picasa:
Picasa Web Albums - skaunit - Halloween

Here is a pic of our work area. In the background you can see the very first block tombstones I made as a kid a long time ago, as well as the groundbreaker I made last year. And that is me working on my cross tombstone:


Here is a closeup of the cross stone I am working on.


Here is the tombstone that my girlfriend's Mom finished:


This is an unfinished pic of the cemetery sign gf's Mom made:


Justin's:


and Jamie's:


And here's the graveyard so far. The fence is a really cheap idea. We bought 3 big packs of long framing shims [like for windows and doors] for $5 each, and a $3 pack of twine rope. and some really cheap grey spray paint [like 3 cans, $1 each]. We covered 50 feet of yard edge for under $25. Next year [If I have a yard to decorate, were moving in feb.] I plan on building a real graveyard fence with wood and pvc, but this fit the budget and time constraints for now.


anyway, that's all for now. I have tomorrow off so I am going to finish up that cross and get moving on some other stuff [gravestone peeper, and FCG's]

thanks for looking.

Hey, nothing wrong with that fence!

First year I did a graveyard, I got the idea to use wood stakes and twine - I spraypainted the stakes to age them up and I think it still looked pretty darn good!

Some of the graveyard fencing tends to look the same after a while, so having something a little different stands out.

Nice mix of stones and love the cross one!

Looks fantastic!

awesome! too bad you cant get the pink foam. It's so much easier to work with. I was lucky this year. Four sheets of it blew into my friend's parent's yard this year from a city construction site. They never came for it. Free Wins!

These look so good! I have worked and worked on mine and they keep looking worse. I am sitting here right now putting off getting back up and trying again. I went with free thin white sheets that I glued together for thickness, can't carve into them. All I can do at this late date is just go with low lighting.

Have you thought of using a heat gun or wood burning tool or soldering iron to melt designs into the white foam?

The white stuff sux! I tried last year.. came out like crap. I let my kids beat it up with their light sabers. I bought a wood burning kit for it too, and the white stuff just falls apart. I tried cutting with various tools, no mater what, it looked jagged and crap everywhere. Tried sanding and chunks of it would come out. It was like $5 for a sheet, so figured it would be about the same cost, if not a little less than buying them, when you factor in the paint and such. In the end, I figure, it's cheaper and much faster to buy them. The only benefit I get out of making them is if I wanted to do a custom one, say with my family or something involved. If I could get the denser foam here in CA, I'd be more up to doing it again, but apparently we can't get it here.

this is not white Styrofoam that comes apart in little balls, this stuff is much denser. It says R MAX on the silver foil coating, and was $25 for a 2" 4'x8' sheet.
It cuts and carves just fine, my only complaint/problem is that, after removing all coating, it will not react with spray paint, or even acetone. On the flip side, you can paint it with spray paint without much of any problem. Next year I am going to try and find some extruded polystyrene [XPS, the pink or blue stuff most people on here talk about]. Being in California does suck.

thanks for the comments, I'll post more pictures tomorrow or Saturday when we get more completed.

I use the Dry-Lock concrete sealer. The stuff is great, it looks like concrete when dry and after a few muddy paint washes it ages well too.

Cali has some rigid environmental laws, i guess. I think I'll start an internet poly styrene shipping company for you Cali folks! lol