Halloween tombstone stakes

This is my first Halloween where I have a huge yard I can decorate. My decorations need to be out in the rain, who knows even snow, so not all decorations will work here in  the mountains. I don't want any fabric or even those fake cobwebs will probably be full of real cobwebs and definitely pine needles when Halloween is over.

I do have a lot of OSB plywood end pieces leftover from my shed roof so I decided to make some tombstones.

First I used the skill saw to cut a my plywood into tombstone sized pieces. Then I used the jigsaw to round the corners off. One of them I left square and did a crack design instead.

Next I put some brown latex paint on both sides. Did the backside first and then the front. Of course if you have gray or black that would work fine too.

Once the back side dried I screwed some wood stakes on, two screws each so I can pound them in if I need to. Once the front side dried I got some lighter spray paint and fogged it on the middle area.

Now is the fun part. I just did hand lettering on mine but it is not the greatest. I made up for my lack of straight letters by making up kooky names, descriptions and unreasonable birth and death dates. It was plain so I added crosses, floral patterns and skulls at the top to dress them up more since grave markers used to be extremely ornate.

I still did not think they were spooky enough so I threw some red acrylic paint on and couldn't get that blood stain look with a brush so just got my fingers in there and made some bloody finger prints and smears. Hey, I know it's not as realistic as I wanted but you can get a letter stencil at your local craft store and use that to make it much better.

I think an outline around the edge would give it more dimension too, but that might be for next year since I got so excited I stuck them in the ground already.