No, this does not have anything to do with Tombstone Pizza, rather it has all to do about Halloween Tombstones! We make handmade wood tombstones from pressed wood for Halloween (not sure if you knew this) and we sell them on our eBay store. We got this idea last year as we were frustrated with our own styrofoam tombstones falling down in our yard every year from the wind, so we set out to design some tombstones for ourselves, and when they turned out better than what we originally thought, we decided to add them to our eBay inventory and they have gone over well.
We have a lot of designs to choose from, so take your pick! Here’s what we do for you: We hand cut your wood tombstone from pressed wood, then sand it smooth, then we cut a wood base for you, and also include the screws for the base and the two 7″ spikes to pound into the ground. What do you do? When you receive your wood tombstone, you paint & finish it the way you want or add some creative tombstone epitaphs with stencils, then make sure you add a clear coat when you’re all done to help seal the wood from the outside elements.
Here are some of the designs we have for sale on our eBay store, and keep checking back, as we will be adding more designs before Halloween.
Listed below are some of the tombstones that we have finished / painted for our front yard, just to give you an idea of how you can paint or stain your own tombstones. Be creative, as the more creative you are, the better your tombstone will turn out.
We know that it is just June now, but with Halloween about 127 days away, planning for the witching hour takes time. Even if you are planning on purchasing some new Halloween props this year, our advice to you is to SHOP EARLY as all of the places that sell Halloween props & decorations always sell out early and they don’t restock their inventory either! Once it’s gone, it’s gone! So, shop early to get the cool stuff you want, or you will only be left with the items that no one else wants. Here is the link to our eBay store, and where you can purchase a tombstone for yourself!
Halloween is coming (only 272 days away) and you want to give yourself enough time to prepare for the witching hour. Last year, we decided that we had enough of our styrofoam tombstones falling down & getting blown away from the strong winds, so we decided to cutout tombstones from pressed wood – and they turned out great! We got lots of compliments from our neighbors on our handmade tombstones as they were shocked at how great they looked!
I wanted to share with you on how easy (but time consuming) it is to stencil letters onto tombstones. First of all, your letters don’t have to be perfect or in a straight line, make them the way you want them, but most of all, have fun & experiment.
The first step: Open up a blank document (in Word, Publisher etc.) and type out what you want on your tombstone. Experiment in different fonts & sizes. Once you get what font and size you want, printout your letters onto cardstock.
Step Two: Now, cutout your letters with either scissors or a sharp knife. Make sure you make a clean cut around your letters.
Step Three: Paint your tombstone. For the one shown, we painted ours in white glossy paint. Let paint dry.
Step Four: Layout your letters / words onto your tombstone so you can see how they look and get the proper spacing between letters & edges of the tombstone.
Step Five: Now, trace your letters with a black Sharpie Marker on your tombstone. When we did a black tombstone, we used a gray Sharpie Marker when tracing so we could see the edge lines clearly.
Step Six: Paint your letters! Use a very small paint brush to paint your letters as this makes it easier to get good edge lines. Let paint dry.
Step Seven: Your tombstone is almost complete – in order to protect your paint both on the tombstone itself and the letters you just painted, we always do a nice thin layer of clear coat over the entire tombstone to seal it from the weather. You don’t have to do a clear coat, but expect your wood to buckle and split over the years.
That’s it! As you can see it is time consuming, but the final outcome you get is amazing! We have also painted our wood tombstones with gray primer first, then used Krylon Make It Stone and sprayed a thin layer of that over the entire tombstone, then we sealed it with a clear finish. The most important part of all of this, is to have fun & experiment. The more creative you are, the better your tombstone turns out!
As you can see, we tried to add a sense of humor to our tombstone and used the saying “High gas prices killed me“. When we put this out in the yard on Halloween, we’ll place our little red gas can in front of it to complete the look! Last year, we even made a black tombstone with the word “Economy” on it and had red paint dripping down from the letters. All of our neighbors and parents of the trick or treaters just loved that tombstone & laughed at our humor!