Thread: Tombstones without Epitaphs

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Do any of you make tombstones without epitaphs? I carved out a bunch of stones but am dreading the whole carving of my epitaphs process. Do any of you have any short cuts for engraving? My process as of now consists of carving around each letter with an exacto knife, then dremeling out the inside of the letter. One stone usually equals an hour or more. This is why i am concidering leaving some blank and just aging them a lot.

What do you think?

I am looking to do some really aged looking ones this year, so I plan on trying to get some actual shots of a old cemetery, perhaps rubbings if possible.
I was thinking though that the lettering would be incomplete and very shallow, I had planned on sanding down as if it was really aged. This would help in the time step of carving deep letters.

I have some blank ones for background filler. If I wrote on every stone and lit them with prop lights, my haunt would look like the Vegas strip. I think dark, crooked, sunken, and worn stones look authentic and super creepy.

I have a couple with no epitaphs. They add some interest. Having visited some ancient Europena graveyards, I've seen old stones with nothing on them. Remember that the average person is going to stand and look at your graveyard for a couple minutes before moving on, so all of the detail will be lost on most people. Another shortcut is simply put a name and a birth/death year. The majority of my stones are like this. I don't have any wordy epitaphs on any of my stones.

Wooden letters is an opition. yes they are raised, but they are easier

Most of the stones in the Greenwich Township NJ cemetery by my house have worn off epitaphs.




This one was really cool because it was on the side of an abandoned, collapsed home. Nothing like burying your family int he back yard. But it's a nice example of lettering starting to fade. I thought that first date said 1702 but it's 1792. The line at the bottom is so simple..."She is not dead but sleepeth"

I have very short epithets, ala RIP with a date or something similar. I agree that most people do not even look at what is written on your stones, so long wordy poems are sort of a waste.

something that is quick to do (and fairly simple) is to get some blank sticker sheets. these are 8x11 (normal computer paper size) sheets that have a backing to where the whole sheet can be peeled off and used as a sticker. what you can do is draw your letters on the sticker sheet, cut them out with an exacto knife, then peel them off. you can then either use the letters themselves or the sheet with the letters cut out.

either way, stick it to your tombstone (before you've painted it, otherwise you'll just have to paint it again). then take some spray paint and spray over the lettering. make sure that you tape off any parts of the tombstone that you don't want dissolved by the spray paint.

if you choose to use the actual letters, then the area around them will dissolve and you'll have raised letters. if you want the letters engraved into the tombstone, then use the part with the letters missing. if you have "A"s or "O"s, you'll have to put the inner part on there as well, since it won't be attached to the rest of the sheet.

this is a pretty quick method and relatively cheap (compared to buying a dremel if you don't already have one). it does use up a LOT of spray paint though.

but i think it helps to give the foam a "rough stone" look too... i also use it to paint the cracks that i make on my tombstones.

Hope this helps,
LKSmart

Well i was planning on only doing names and birth-Death dates on some but some of them i figured i'll leave blank. I saw a tutorial on Haunt projects (that well kind of depressed me because i thought i was going to be doing something new) where they took haunted portraits and put them on the tombstones. I am planning to do about 8 like that. i don't think i am going to light them though.

you could probably pull it off, if you just put the more decorated ones in prominant areas and just fill in with the wordless ones....that way the decorated will pop out to those looking and they might not even notice that the others don't have anything on them....plus painting to make it old...blend right in.