First I want to thank my neighbor Ruben for taking pictures of my haunt Halloween night. "Thanks Ruben!"

Headstones
All of our headstones this year were made of styrofoam. We used the thin sheets you can get at any building supply store. The steaks were made from fencing bars (the flat ones) and some leftover wood scraps. The scraps were screwed to the bars. We took 3 sheets of the foam the back sheet we carved a bit out for the fence bar. The center sheet we carved out a hole for the scrap of wood, and the front sheet we left alone. Then we spray glued them all together using 3M spray adhesive. (yes, the glue melts them a bit, but that actually helps them stick together better).

Cutting the shape of the headstones wasn't the most fun. We tried several methods and finally decided that a jigsaw with a long blade worked better than anything else we had.

Some had raised lettering, some were carved. The raised lettering was mostly done with those craft foam letters you can get in a bucket at Walmart. Some of the decorations were also carved out of craft foam. The way we got them raised was using spray paint. My husband had bunches of left over spray paint cans in some really horrid colors. Perfect for our plans. The spray paint ate away the foam around the letters.

For the carved ones, I used my printer and printed out the epitaphs. We spray-glued them down using elmers spray adhesive. (not the best for sticking the foam together, but great for the paper). Then using an exacto knife, cut the letters out of the paper. We carved a bit deeper than just the paper, about half an inch into the styrofoam, and it made the letters come out much better. Once the paper letters were removed, we used the spray paint again to eat away the letters.

The designs and lettering on two of the celtic crosses were mostly done by hand. Did you know that the metallic Sharpie markers eat styrofoam? Once I had the design etched in with the Sharpie, I decided I wanted it deeper. I used a wood burning thingy with a pointy tip to make it deeper. Worked WONDERFULLY! But smelled terrible.

We painted the headstones with a latex based paint 4 or 5 at a time, and mixed the paint a little darker with each group so that not all of the headstones were the same color. We used black latex for all of the lettering and design work.

The headstones were placed in the cemetery a week or so before Halloween. We had quite a bit of rain that week, and it really helped age the stones.

Fencing
We had to build all new fencing this year. Weather and age finally finished off our old one. We went for a much fancier look this time. See it Here. As always its made of PVC & wood. (1x4's ripped in half lengthwise). The large circles are PVC drainage pipe. We were able to re-use some of the pickets from our former fence for the short pieces.

The finals are pumpkin and skull whistles, which fit perfectly in the PVC pipe. The large post toppers are skull sets we picked up from Walmart. Their original purpose was to line a walkway. They came with white bulbs. We sanded some of the paint off their teeth, switched the bulbs to red, rewired them to fit all the way around the fence, and stuck them on the posts. There were 5 skulls / box so we needed 3 boxes of them. (That will leave me with a few to play with for next year).

Once it was painted and put together in the front yard, we had many people ask who did the iron work. With huge grins we told them to touch the fence. It really turned out beautifully.

Beck