The Kickboard $2 Tombstones

I was driving past one of my local Dollar Tree stores (where everything's a dollar!) and saw they had these 16 inch tall kickboards out for the summer season.

I don't think I need to tell you what these look like to any haunter like ourselves. But I will.

Tombstones!!

The mostly-no-carve tombstone was born that day. (May 7th, 2003 if you care)

Since there are plenty of tombstone sites out there I won't do a step-by-step but just give you the basics of how I did my two samples here.

ROVER - Run Over: This heavily aged and damaged tombstone was created with the following materials; one kickboard, hot glue, and paint. The rose and seashells were created by impressing hot glue into some plaster molds I had made of a rose and seashell patterns take from soap molds. I literally tore the damage areas out by hand then refined them slightly with a knife. The lettering was drawn on with a pen then I traced over it with hot glue to make raised letters.

I sprayed it with grey primer then added stone texture with Fleckstone Gotham Grey from Walmart. This texture paint is super - not only do you get the look of stone, but it actually adds a physical texture like stone as well.

RIP: This tombstone features a 'carving' of Jesus Christ under the RIP lettering. The carving is actually the front plastic facing from a Dollar Tree nightlight. They have several religous nightlights to choose from. I hot glued it onto the kickboard and created the RIP using the same technique above. I then cut off the bottom of the kickboard (the concave curved area) and used that to make two pieces which I hot glued on the sides near the top to make a more complex tombstone shape. Add grey primer, texture paint, some dry brush aging and you're done!

If anyone comes up with other variations of these techniques and new designs - please let me know!

The $3 Tombstone aka: Dawn Under: This was created from $3 worth of Dollar Tree purchases. I was not about to go cheap on this one!

I started with the kickboard again - but this time I carved it into a celtic cross of sorts.

Next I took a styrofoam beer cooler. I carved off the handles and used some 'foamies' letters to give a raised epitaph/name on the front. The letters come in multiple colors (you can find these at Michaels craft store for $3 - but I didn't even use a $1 worth) - but try as I might I had to use white and green. Other tombstones I've made have even more colorful letters under the paint.

The cherub/angel was made from Hot Glue. This was cast from a plaster copy of a soap mold similar to the rose and shells above.

I hot glued the cherub to the cross then glued the cross to the cooler. You have to be careful gluing to the cooler as the hot glue can melt the styrofoam - but if you're careful, you'll get a good bond with little damage.

BTW...the blue lines on the cross are from measuring to cut the cross out.

Here's the final result!

I didn't use spray paint primer since that melts the styrofoam (well...I did use a little to make the bottom more stone-like) I just used some acrylic paints that worked fine as a grey primer.

I used my good ole' Fleckstone Gotham Grey to texture the whole piece. I'm getting better at using it too...the trick is to NOT coat the entire piece evenly or even in smooth strokes. I dry brushed the stains on there then put a little more texture paint on to blend everything better.

I like the results!

Two web sites that were invaluable to me in providing ideas for art to go on my tombstones are

Sweeny Funeral Home's "The Meaning of Grave Symbols" and

The Sexton's Book of Tales "Tombstone Art & Symbols"