Making Halloween tombstones

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A very popular Halloween decoration is decorated tombstones. And what is even more popular is making Halloween tombstones. Halloween fans enjoy making their own graveyard items along with their families.

These are fun and useful Halloween crafts and help save money on the decorations for the occasion. What makes tombstones so popular?  In fact, nothing is scarier than approaching a home with numerous tombstones sticking out of the ground.

Items needed for making Halloween tombstones include:

• A cardboard tombstone template
• Plywood or cardboard cut into about 10 large tombstone sized pieces
• Consider a white poster board for school projects and presentations as your tombstone material
• Water based white, black and gray paint
• Several paintbrushes
• A rag or cloth for making special effects
• A jigsaw or scissors
• Ruler and pencil
• Red and green permanent marking pen

Directions for making Halloween tombstones:

1. Surf the Internet or find photos of classic old tombstones in books
2. Draw your tombstone design based on your research
3. Create a tombstone template by using your ruler and pencil
4. Cut out your template in plywood or cardboard
5. Draw and write the information on your plywood or cardboard tombstone model
6. Paint the name, date of birth and death with your paint brush and black paint
7. Paint the remaining area in grey
8. Before the grey paint is fully dry, use a rag to both smudge and rub it for a textured and aged appearance
9. Take your red and green marking pens and make tiny blots around the edges of the either plywood or cardboard tombstone that is now painted grey and black
10. Drip a bit of the black paint down the front of the tombstone “art” to create a rained or weathered appearance
11. Dig a small hole in the ground where you want to place each of the tombstones
12. Bury the tombstone about four inches of the bottom of the tombstone in the ground
13. Make sure there is some available light to help illuminate the tombstones once they are placed in the ground
14. Arrange the tombstones into crooked rows of four or five with a display consisting of five to 10 tombstones that are displayed as old or fresh graves in your front yard

If you’re a more advanced crafter and are interested in more intricate tombstones to realize at home, here’s a video that shows you the steps to take for making Halloween tombstones with details and specific accents.

If you’re like me and love doing Halloween homemade props, then you’re going to enjoy learning how to make Halloween tombstones and will certainly produce a huge number of these cemetary items.

Making Halloween Tombstone Using Foam Boards

How to Paint Homemade Halloween Tombstones

Overall, the Halloween tombstone decoration idea is a popular one with both young and old who like to present their homes as very creepy and spooky on Halloween.