Masquerade Tutorial - Tombstone Ice Chest

I know what you guys are thinking, a tutorial on Sunday? Yes, we wanted to try to get out all the Masquerade projects before Halloween, so y'all get an extra treat! At our masquerade we made the styrofoam cooler into a tombstone, it's the little things really. So after we were about done with the project we realized we wanted to do a post on it, so we had to recreate the photos, bear with us. 

You will need: 

Large piece of foam board
Paint
Square styrofoam cooler
Printed lettering 
Mod Podge 
Spray Adhesive 

First draw out your tombstone on the foam board and cut it out. I laid the cooler down to mark how wide it needs to be, used a yard stick to get straight lines going up, and a bowl to get a even rounded top. 

Use an exacto knife to cut out the shape. 

Next paint the board, we went with gray, but it was missing something so we used a foam brush (which was time consuming) and sponged on black and then went back over it lightly with grey. It gave it the depth and aged look we wanted. 

The picture above was one of the ones we had to recreate, and that isn't with all the top coat of grey on it. it has some, but we wanted y'all to see how we did the black behind it. 

While that dries, paint the styrofoam cooler. The one we got had a polar bear on top so we sanded that off and applied 2 coats of grey paint. 

Chose the design you want on the tombstone, since our party was Edgar Allan Poe themed, we made a tombstone for him. Print out any letters you want, in whatever font you like. 

Cut out all the letters and lay them out where you want them to go. I used a yard stick to draw lines under where they were going so that I stayed straight, then painted back over them when I was done. We also added a large picture of Poe in the middle, with two ravens on the side. Attach all letters/pictures with mod podge. 

Then adhere the foam board to the cooler with spray adhesive. We put some weight on it and let it sit for a few hours so that is could have a good bond. 

There you have it! An excellent addition to any spooky party!