Head Over Heels Friday DIY Friday: Spooky Edition

It's another spooky DIY Friday!  This time my hubby got in on the fun too! 

I had a copy of Martha Stewart's Halloween Handbook and saw these fun DIY headstones...

Image via Martha Stewart



I thought they would set the perfect spooky mood in our front yard for all the Halloween trick-or-treaters.  I shared my idea with Alex and he came up with our own simple way to make them using leftover wood from his wainscoting project.  The Martha ones were of course a bit fancier and more complicated... oh that Martha.

Alex grabbed the wood from the basement and drew guidelines for the headstone shapes.

 Then, he carefully cut each board with his jigsaw.

 Here are the four shapes we went with for the headstones.  We decided that they didn't need to be 100% perfect since they were supposed to look old and creepy.

 I used black and gray spray paint that had a hammered finish so they would look more like stone- but really I couldn't see the effect once they were coated.  So any flat paint would have been fine too.

For the wood stakes, Alex again used old spare wood pieces and attached them with nails.

Once the spray paint was dry, we brought the headstones inside to apply designs!  This was the part we were most excited about, we both had a couple silly things we wanted them to say.  Well, I guess I did and Alex wanted to go with something on the creepier side of course.

Now in order for me to show you the headstones, we need to switch to spooky black and white graveyard vision....

 Ahh, that one is my favorite, it makes me giggle when I see it :)

Here are the other designs...

 I had to add a fun one for the year our house was built.

I added little solar lights in front of each one to light them up like Martha's at night. I think I might add some other fun decor by them too, I wanted to add pumpkins but the squirrels keep eating mine, grrr!  Alex's big idea is to dig a huge hole to so he can climb out of a 'grave' on Halloween and scare kids.  Not likely, but a fantastic idea :)

Click here to see last week's Spooky DIY tutorial

What did you think of our DIY Headstones?

What funny phrase would you add to one?

I know they aren't as fancy as Martha's but we certainly had a blast making them.  I imagine they also took less time and money to create though... so boo-ya Martha!  I think they will be fun and spooky looking for all the trick-or-treaters on Halloween... Hopefully our neighbors don't mind them for a while :)

Have a great weekend everyone!