Project: Afterglow

Trying to take it easy today to give the back a chance to mend from the ultra race damage. since I cannot just lie here doing nothing, figured it would be a good time to get one of the mega Halloween ’23 project posts out. These tend to be rather involved with all the technical detail and accompanying images. New tombstones for this year’s Haunted Trail is no exception. Hopefully the DIY haunters out there will enjoy this project and hopefully get you well on your way should you want to add this type of prop to your own Halloween displays.

To give you an idea of how these new lighted tombstones look, here’s a shot of one of this year’s new stones on our haunted trail.

Hit the jump to learn how this (and several others) came to be. Warning, your browser image cache is going to be smoking by the time you get to the bottom of the post ha.

To start things off, a main component of all my tombstones is foam sheets. They are lightweight, easy to carve/shape, paintable and incredibly forgiving if you make a mistake. If there is one complaint it, is the price. Here is the current prices at Menards for the 4’x8′ Extruded Polystyrene Insulation sheets from Foamular.

For this project I used 1/2″ and 1.5″ thick sheets. I wanted to use the 2″ thick sheets for bases, but $60 is way to expensive for this purpose. Opted for an alternative material for that – will cover that later in the post.

First step was to create blanks for the tombstone shapes. Using a variety of shapes based on images found on the web and my own cemetery explorations, I drew each stone’s shape on the 1/2′ sheeting. The width was measured and another piece was cut so they could be stacked before cutting the final shape. This provided the front and back panels for the tombstone.

I had a lot of 1.5″ pieces laying around from projects – the sheets are too expensive just to waste it, so I spend a lot of time optimizing cuts and keep all my scraps for future projects. Using those scraps, built up side walls around the entire perimeter of the stone. You want overlap on the outside in order to cut the foam to shape and enough overlap on the inside to give solid support while still leaving plenty of room for the epitaph.

There are a number of foam safe glues out there including Gorilla’s clear construction adhesive. In this case, Great Stuff’s Construction Adhesive Foam worked perfectly. Recommend using food skewers found at any Dollar General/Walmart or hobby store to keep the pieces of foam from moving once glued together.

Once they have bonded, simply cut the excess 1.5″ foam pieces using the outline of the panel they were glued to. A hot knife works best, but a drywall keyhole saw or a knife specifically purposed for foam cutting will work as well. WARNING: extruded foam gives off a toxic gas when melted so be sure and do that outside or even smarter, also while wearing a mask equipped with gas filters.

Next up was getting the back plates prepared to be attached to the front structure. I used the same principles used in my previous foam coffin tutorial (link here). Figured out the best attachment points for each of the stone shapes and put a skewer through the back plate into the base (the section you just glued and trimmed). The reason for the skewer is to put aligning holes in the base and the back plate in order to put the connectors in.

Using the heated pipe technique from that previous post, melted in holes for the PVC tubes into the outer 1.5″ foam structures centering them on the skewer holes. Simply used a Dremel to produce the corresponding holes in the back plate (the 1/2″ foam that doesn’t have the 1.5″ pieces glued to it). A hole all the way through the same size as the inner diameter of the connector PVC pipes was made first and then an inset was created halfway through that matched the outer diameter of the connector – forgot to take a picture of those up close, but essentially they are a 3D designed and printed single blades that insert into the PVC connector and then have a wider cap on the end that will keep the base plate connected to the rest of the stone structure. You can see a small image of it in the pictures below. Note, this allows me to quickly take the back off and put it back on when needed.

Here is another shot of the melted hole in the 1.5″ foam (bottom sheet) and the hole with inset for the foam connectors.

A PVC pipe was glued into the 1.5″ foam holes with adhesive foam and then the back plate and connectors were added in to get the orientation right for the connection. Make sure you do no get glue on the outside part of the foam when you are putting in the PVC pipe so it does not glue to the back plate when they are put together.

Here is what two of the stones looked like when they are waiting for their connectors to cure.

You probably already noticed, but the first stone I made I chose to glue the 1.5″ foam to the back plate thinking it would be easier to carve the epitaph. That was true, but then that made the connectors visible on the front. Going forward, I glued the side structure on the front.

The Darwynn stone was my guinea pig as I was learning how put this altogether which is why the letters were already cut out of that one. Used the same process on the following ones, with the only difference being the front of the tombstones now had the 1.5″ structures glued to it. There should be no interference from the sidewalls – if so, you will need to resize your letters or do some trimming on the inner side of the 1.5″ walls. You want the light to be able to shine through to the front.

Luckily Linda lets me use her Cricut to cut out the epitaph letters. Be careful of what font you use as you will be cutting all the way through the top layer of foam. Add bridges if needed to keep from large chunks of the letters falling through. Here are the two remaining stones with their lettering transferred. If you zoom in to the images, you will see I had to add bridges to a number of the letters.

As mentioned, you need to cut all the way through this 1/2″ top layer of foam. I used a hot wire cutter that has a single long rod allowing me to easily cut out the various letters. Earlier warning about the toxic gasses emitted in this process applies here as well.

m,n

Once the letters were all cut out, the two halves of the tombstone were reattached so I could start building bases for them. This year I wanted to step up the haunted trail cemetery with larger, more elaborate tombstones. The price for 2″ extruded foam was way more than I wanted to spend, so opted for the significantly cheaper expanded polystyrene. Not as durable as the extruded, but nearly a 1/3rd of the price.

Cut bases out of the 2″ foam using two different sizes of doubled up layers, essentially giving me 8 inches of base.

To make them more decorative, cut bevels in the various layers. Nice thing about this type of foam is they do not give off toxic gasses when cut with a hot knife. Still recommend doing it outside and/or wearing a mask.

I used my foam cutting jig to create the angled cuts with the hot knife giving me nice straight lines.

Just by modifying the different layers and changing the angle cuts, was able to produce some very nice and unique pedestals for the new stones.

Here they are all together.

Storage is always front and center when it comes to our Halloween props. I try to think about how I can break them down to the smallest area during the off season. The tombstones with their bases on take up a lot of space Key was to easily separate them, but still be sturdy enough to keep from blowing over on the trail. Time to kill two birds with one stone (pun intended ha). Sections were cut out of the bottom of each of the stone’s 1.5″ foam. 3/4 pipe with an end cap and a coupler was foam glued into those slots. Cap at the top and coupler at the bottom flush with the bottom of the tombstone.

Once cured, put a piece of 3/4 pipe in the coupler, centered the tombstone on its base and pushed down creating an indentation on the base for a corresponding mating coupler. Holes were then made in each of the bases using a metal pipe heated up with a blow torch. A piece of 3/4 pipe with a coupler at then top precut to the height of the base was then foam glued into the hole. Recommend attaching the tombstone to the base to make sure the alignment is perfect while the pipe in the base cures. This allows rods to be placed in the ground and the bases placed on top to keep them secured in the cemetery.

With the bases attached it was time to distress the tombstones. I’ve covered this in many of my other tutorials, so will not go into detail on the cracks. I did use a scraper to beat up the edges of the stones, fix any inconsistencies between the edges of the layers and gave it that weathered look. The same was done with the bases, but be careful as that foam is softer and will chunk out easier. Once all the distressing is done, hit it with a heat gun to deepen the cracks, crisp up the edges of the lettering and harden the edges you hit with the scraper. Heed the toxic gas warnings from earlier.

Next up the paint phase. Extruded foam and pretty sure the expanded foam can get eaten by the propellant in spray paint cans. I always use an airbrush with thinned out acrylic black paint for the base coats. I hit every crack and the inside of the letters the best I can which usually means several coats on the extruded foam. For future stones I will likely paint the insides white to improve the lighting effect.

This is the first time I have worked with the expanded foam. It does not hold the paint like the extruded does and applied many coats before I was happy with the coverage. Try not to get paint on the inside of any of the 3/4″ pipe couplers – all of the exposed PVC was covered with blue tape.

For some reason I did not take pictures during the final coat of paint. I use monster mud for all my foam Halloween props that need painting. There are many recipes online. I use ~4:1 drywall compound and latex exterior paint to a consistency slightly thicker than potato soup. You should be able to roll or brush it on, but it should not run. Lightly roll over the faces of the distressed stones to bring out the cracks and pop the lettering. It should go on evenly and smoothly now that the tombstones have a base coat. Here is a shot of the front of the stones once paint was finished.

..and the backs – remember I switched which side I glued the inner supports after the first stone. Will paint the insides of the tombstones white from now on.

…and now with their backs attached with a couple of foam couplers.

This is the point where things got interesting. I went to explore lighting options and was given a rude reminder of my college physics days. Light is directional until something deflects it or diffuses it. So, when I kept the backs off and simply put a light source in the bottom, they looked fantastic.

As in exactly what I was hoping for.

Then I put the backs on tight and, well, not so happy. The light was coming up from the bottom and didn’t get any deflection until it hit the inside top of the tombstone. This meant the light rays did NOT come through the lettering as I had originally thought. Putting the light directly behind the letters and pointing out allowed the light through the lettering, but looked like crap. Quite the disappointment after all the work put into the stones thus far. Pulled the back off and put it at an angle to the stones seemed to work the best as the light rays eventually bounced around enough to make it out.

Not what I wanted and I certainly didn’t want to add more foam pieces to keep that angle.

Decided to set that aside and recruit my brother Ron to help come up with a solution. Until then, I could start the embellishment phase. I like to adorn my stones with interesting features just to snazzy them up a bit … and in some cases, help with the hidden meaning in the epitaph. From the moment I came up with the lettering, I knew what I wanted to added to the Darwynn stone – a beer mug and tap, of course!

Found these skull mugs at Walmart for a whopping 89 cents each. Some things just drop in your lap..vs the struggle in the lighting department ugh. Bought a clear one and an orange one – figured I would probably make some mistakes modifying the first one so had the second just in case. Started with the clear one as I preferred the orange one for the final product. First task, cut it into two pieces. Wanted some projection, so pushed the cut as far back as I could. Getting a straight cut on a curved plastic mug took a bit of work. Ended up using a straight edge to get the cut line on both sides.

Taped the good side with blue tape and cut it with a rotary tool with a cutting wheel attachment. I then had to cut off the handle that was originally on the backside of the mug and reattach it to the side after adjusting the profile to fit with the cutter.

Turns out I didn’t mess up the first one. I did push the cut even further back on the orange mug which I ended up liking the best. We found a nice tap at a flea market – likely for hard liquor, but it would work nicely for our beer motif.

Ended up lighting that tapper with an LED and threading the wires through the tap. Found this talking door knocker at Michael’s. It has a smoked plastic cover that the talking skull lights through once activated. Simply had to hack the built in push button activation mechanism to use our proprietary proximity prop controller instead.

In test showings of the Fred tombstone, I was getting some strange faces as they struggled to figure it out. I still think it is easy if you sound it out, but Ruger decided it needed and assist. He dug around in his toy box and brought me the perfect accessory. If they don’t get it now, they never will.

Thanks for the donation Ruger!

The Darwynn stone now with the tapper and mug addition.

….and the Claire stone with the added spooky door knocker. You can see the fogged outer shell in this shot.

Now time to deal with the lighting issue. Ron came up with a great idea to put a diffuser on the front and have the lighting directly behind it. This got rid of the harsh lighting when I tried just putting the light behind the letters. Ended up going with a layer of photography quality diffuser with two layers of transfer paper. that was taped directly on the back of the letters. We then added some battery powered rope light found at Walmart taped to white foam core board that sat inside the opening between the 1.5″ side structure.

Big thanks to Ron as that worked PERFECTLY. The letters all lit up evenly without any of the harsh light from the rope lights sitting behind it.

Time to show off the final products!

This was taken prior to the mug and tapper being added.

And Claire ..also just noticed this was prior to adding the door knocker.

One final step was to add switches on the outside of the stones. I didn’t want to have to take off the backs to turn them on/off at the start and end of each night of the trail.

Now for and added bonus. Brad M. gave me a great idea for another stone based on my training run accident a few weeks before. Note, I later found out this idea might have originated from his wife Jan, in which case I need to give both of them credit for this prop. Followed pretty much the same process as outlined for the other stones. Only exception is I added side columns in which I hid wiring for a lighted embellishment.

The stairs give a nice size reference – Ellie is quite a bit taller than the other stones.

Ron found these really cool winged skeletons which worked perfectly as the lighted embellishment. They are sitting on LEDs which gave the skeletons an awesome spooky look. I then added a not so subtle reminder of the injury the stone is immortalizing – complete with a matching metal plate at the elbow (granted almost everyone missed that little touch).

Thanks again to Jan and Brad for their clever idea. All that is left is to show them in all their splendor out on the trail.

Claire with the the door knocker activated.. Ron had an extra winged skeleton so we added that as well.

My favorite shot of the new stones. Here is Darwynn with the skull mug and lighted tap. You could see the skull features better than what this image picked up.

Lastly Ellie with the bottom lit skeletons. Kudos to Ron’s placement of the enhanced storebought weeping angel tombstone.

Hope you enjoyed this year’s new tombstones. Our first attempt into the lighted stone props and I must say, I think they turned out awesome. Can’t wait to get started on next year’s cemetery additions.

Thanks again to Ron, Jan and Brad for helping make these all come together!