Its Almost Halloween

Halloween is only 3 days away! My graveyard is almost ready, we lost a few store bought tombstones in the wind and I have yet to put them back up. Some of the neighbors stop by and admired the graveyard. Its great to see everyone who drives by smile and look at the graveyard.


I made a Grim Reaper for the graveyard this year. I bought a skeleton mask at a yard sale earlier this year that makes up the head and neck. I have a mannequin that makes up the body, and my friends gave me a nice grim reaper cape. We've had an antique sickle hanging in the barn as long as I've been alive. So I put all these things together and now I have a grim reaper. The mask was stuffed with an oversize black garbage bag and was duck taped to the mannequin. I wired the sickle onto the grim reaper and was trying to set it up when the sickle fell and hit my hand, its a good thing the blade isn't sharp or I would have cut off my finger. I wired it on better and used cinder blocks to keep everything up. The arms are from an old buckley skeleton that fell apart.









I got this cool skeleton from Wal Mart.com, its a better price than the ones you can get from the medical supply place, but its probably not as good of quality.

Halloween 2007 Food and Drink

Cross Tombstone

I have been wanting to create a cross tombstone and had an old one from Party City that was broken last year. I kept it and used it as a template for a larger home made one. I have been having a hard time finding a way to cut the shapes out of my tombstones, I had bought a hot knife for foam from Michael's Craft store, it was really flimsy and broke in just a few minutes. I found some expensive ones that would work online but they are close to 200$; the reason I started making my own was to save money. I know it would be a good investment but not at this point in time. I found a wire cutter in the garage that works off of the air compressor, it did an alright job cutting out the basic shape but didn't go all the way through, I used a wood saw for the rest, can't get too detailed, but as long as I keep the shapes basic it will work ok. The best thing about the wire cutter is that it spins and can buff out some edge details that make the foam look more like stone, it takes the place of sand paper.





The detail work is another plastic type candle holder I found at a yard sale, I unscrewed the part that holds the candle and glued it on to the stone with some liquid nails. I put some moss on the tombstone, living in Missouri there is moss everywhere and I just pulled some up off the ground in the back yard. I plan on putting some more moss on the bottom and sides of this tombstone.



I found some of these changing pictures at Michael's they are new for this year and are about 2" tall, they are "old timey" photos that change the people into skeletons. I pasted this one on the tombstone.





This was an addition to the stone, I hadn't carved anything at first and then decided to just add a year at the bottom.

Pumpkins

This is a Big Max variety pumpkin, I ended up with three of these. I had two huge plants that were growing in some rich compost and they were doing very well until the squash vine borer killed them. Two other plants of this variety survived and then were attacked by the squash bugs. Seven dust took care of those. I have a few plants of the Connecticut Field variety and have about nine pumpkins from those. I don't think The Great Pumpkin will be visiting this little patch on Halloween Night.


This is one of the Connecticut Field pumpkins.

First Homemade Tombstone

I started this tombstone back in June. Cutting out the basic shape was rough going; the hot knife I bought was cheap and broke halfway through. I used some large knifes to cut out the rest of the shape, the blue foam is too thick, I won't be able to use a knife to cut out my second tombstone. I cut out a basic tombstone shape, someone said it looked more like a headboard for a bed.





I'm painting the tombstone flat gray, hopefully I can go back and try to "age" the stone and make it look closer to stone. I've noticed in this area most of the real tombstones have small orange and yellow lichen growing on them. I have some Spanish moss from a bag I got at a garage sale that I might paste on later. The fancy detail I bought at a garage sale, it was a cheap plastic candle holder; it kind of reminds me of the old decorations they used to have at the funeral home.



I painted the words black and they do seem to stand out from the gray tombstone.



In the end this will be seen in the dark with a blue light shining on it, so hopefully any flaws will be covered up by that, you have to admit it is better than those small wal*mart tombstones that cost so much.

More Tombstones

More tombstones photos from the cemetery in Seymour. I found some Davis tombstones, don't know who they were though, no relation.





My first homemade tombstone is ready for painting, we have been in a heatwave for a while and when it cools down I will start to paint it. I'll have photos on soon.

Tombstone Building Part 1

So today I started on building tombstones. We started out at Lowes, and let me tell you, they do not act like the guys on their TV commercials. Well the guy at the paint desk was very helpful and polite, he did a great job; however the guys in the lumber area where the foam is basically told be to do it yourself. I used to work at a grocery store and our boss would tell us it didn't matter if a guy built like Arnold Schwarzenegger came in we asked the guy if he wanted us to carry his grocerys out. I asked the guys at the project counter for some help; I was carrying paint and glue; its not like I can't get some huge foam board myself, I'm capable, its just the fact the guy was a major a-hole. This was the Lowe's in Springfield, Missouri.

I then went to Michale's craft store where I bought a hot knife for foam cutting. Its normally a 20$ item; I had a 50% off coupon so it was 10$. 10$ I want back, while cutting the foam about 2/3 the way down the damn thing broke, it wasn't doing a good job cutting the foam and it was very flimsy. I am thinking of buying a hot knife from the Hotwire Foam Factory online, but they are more expensive, I was hoping do it yourself was cheaper than those wal mart tombstones. I know it will look better in the end to do it myself but I can't spend a fortune on this stuff.