Check out the progress on our No Vacancy tombstone here.

I decided to keep our first ones sort of simple and good thing because I messed up terribly on my first one and had to turn it over and start over!

I then started in with the dates on Dracula's Tombstone. I got this tombstone idea from Ghostess Deanna's site. It's got a lot of great ideas: The Dead End online. Of course, I picked a difficult font for my first one. Oh well. Live and learn. I did learn to appreciate all the advice I had heard about using a sharp blade. Keep many spares on hand as the foam dulls them quickly...After cutting out the name and dates, I cleaned them up with the dremel for a clean "laser-cut" look.

Here's our version of the typical Celtic cross, uncut. This template and many more can be found here.

We've been using a standard Coping Saw (seven bucks at Home Depot) for cutting out the shapes. I've ordered a cutting tool from the foam factory, but it hasn't arrived yet. This saw works fine though...(the cutting tool did arrive and I'm disappointed. It is very thin and bendy and we have to be careful not to break off the heating element. Next time I might just try Michaels or something)

Here it is cut. We need to do some "weathering" and a date or something next...

The tombstones base-coated...and Jimmy.

Brad's cross finished. He just used gray and black regular spray paints.

Base-coating the Dracula stone. I sponged it on thick so I only had to do one coat to cover the black manufacturer's lettering.

Here is the Dracula stone finished. I didn't put enough cracks in it and the font is too small. Live and learn. (With all this study, I'll certainly know what I want my stone to look like!)

Here is a close-up of the textured spray paint I used. Its very expensive (over eight bucks a can), but it worked beautifully. I really like the texture and look of it. It took the whole can to do this one stone though...

Here is a close up of the edge so you can see the texture better...

And a photo of the product we used.

more to come...

Inspirational websites for tombstones:

Some fun tombstone projects: