New Quickie Halloween Prop: Mini Cardboard Tombstones

My wife teaches 4th grade, and is trying to get her students to use their vocabulary words and get creative in their talking and writing. Her kids have also been overusing a number of nasty phrases that she is trying to eradicate.

I am obviously rubbing off on her, since she came to me a few days ago and said that she would like to “bury” these words and phrases under tombstones. Basically, she wanted me to make her little tombstones with her pet peeve words and phrases on them, just as a reminder to her kids to stop using them. I finally made them tonight, and here is the result:

I created the documents in Word, printed them out, and freehanded the outline with a razor blade. Next I traced the outline onto white cardboard and cut it out, adding a few inches to the bottom for the stand. Then I mounted the paper to the cardboard with basic white glue, scored the cardboard so as to bend ot to create the base so they are completely self sufficient like so:

I wouls assume that this could be used to make full sized tombstones too, maybe using some rocks or other weights on the base to keep them standing up. These guys are about 8″ tall.

Anyway, that’s my project for the night. Not too shabby for a quickie, right?