How to Make a Fake Graveyard on Your Lawn for Halloween

When Halloween rolls around, one great way to make your yard a scary place is by building a graveyard on your lawn. It's not hard to do, and you can make it either spooky or funny. Here are some hints on how to make a graveyard on your lawn for Halloween.

Things You'll Need

• 2" Insulation foam, at least a 4x8 foot sheet
• Exterior paint, gray
• Gray fleckstone paint, 2 cans
• Black acrylic paint and a brush
• 2 wooden stakes per headstone

Instructions

How to Make a Graveyard on Your Lawn for Halloween

1. Start by buying a 4x8 sheet of 2" insulation foam. You can pick this up at any home improvement store. Once you've gotten the sheet home, cut it into headstones. Do this by scoring lines in one side, and then snapping the foam off. A 4x8 sheet should give you several headstones of various sizes. The best size to use is about 2x3 feet, but you can make them larger or smaller if you like.

2. Paint the pieces with a base coat of gray paint. Use an exterior paint. If you have any basement floor paint around your house, this will work well. Be sure to paint both the front and back, as well as the top and sides. There's no need to paint the bottom edge. Once the base coat has dried, spray the front and sides with gray fleck-stone paint. One can should cover about four stones.

3. After the fleck-stone paint is dry, begin making your inscriptions. You can do this with black acrylic paint and a brush. Figure out what your stones will say. Many people like to do funny epitaphs, like "Here lies the body of Jonathan Blake, who stepped on the gas instead of the brake," or "I told you I was sick!" If you want to make your graveyard scary instead of silly, make headstones for horror movie characters like Freddy Krueger or Jason or Frankenstein. Paint the epitaphs on the stones, and let them dry.

4. Once all the paint has dried, attach the stones to a pair of wooden stakes. You can do this with nails or sturdy duct tape mounted to the back of each stone. Leave about a foot of stake below the bottom edge of the stone. With a rubber mallet, pound the stakes into the ground, so that the bottom of each headstone is flush with the ground. Mound a little bit of dirt over the front bottom edge, so that the edge is hidden from view. Arrange your headstones however you like, and get ready to scare your little trick-or-treaters when they come a-knocking!

Tips & Warnings

• Highlight your graveyard by placing lengths of fence around it. You can do this with old slats of wood pounded into the ground to make a rickety fence.

• Use lights to illuminate your headstones at night.

• Be sure your graveyard is out of the way of foot traffic - you don't want trick-or-treaters getting tangled up in your graveyard and getting hurt!