Whether you choose to make this simple and inexpensive version of my creative Headstone Necklace . . . . with typed data. . .

Or this version, with actual headstone rubbings reduced down to a fraction of their original size, with extra embellishments and photos. . . . Either one is made more special by the information being from your own ancestors !

Supplies you are going to need for the headstones are:

• Paper and or towel to protect your work surface
• Small wooden tags (half again more than the number of headstones you need)
• Pens and Acrylic Paint to color headstone
• Print of the information you want of the headstones
• Mod Podge
• 2 chains – plastic or metal
• connectors or jump rings and extra links of chain

Tools you will use.

• Soft Paint Brush
• Bowl of water
• Jewelers pliers.

Making Your Headstones –

You need to pick small wooden tags available in most craft and many department stores with the hole already drilled, or find tiny headstone shaped wood blanks (available during Halloween craft season) that you will need to drill later on. The small wooden tags come in a reasonable variety of shapes. I would recommend doing several extra in case you are not happy with the results of a given headstone you can do it over.

For the Mod Podge to work properly you need to have at least a basic layer of paint or primer on the wood. . . What I did was start by saturating the wood with water on a soft bristle paint brush.

You can paint your headstones any way that suits you. . . I outlined each headstone with a Gelly Roll pen which is water-soluble and has a ink which was a lot faster than a layer of paint since I did not just want plain white or grey headstones.

However you choose to paint your headstones, do all of them the same way, here I put red on top left, purple bottom left, blue top right and green bottom right. . . some a little more, some a little less, but primarily the same.

The ink on each little headstone bled from the water, and I exaggerated this action by adding more water and swirling the brush around immediately after I inked up each one.

I wiped each piece with a piece of tissue. . . rubbing the center a little extra to stop the bleeding of color, and let them dry.

To lighten the center a little more I swirled a watered down brush with just a little antique white acrylic paint on each headstone to lighten up the center. The color bled up through the wet acrylic paint.

Color added some fun to my headstones, but I believe grey would look more spooky for Halloween. . . . The more unique your color scheme, the more extra headstone you should paint.

Type the information you want on your headstones to fit and then flip your print when you print the information.

Cut to fit your headstones

Put a nice layer of Mod Podge on your print.

Center your prints on each headstone.

Use an outdated credit card to smooth any air bubbles under the paper. Don’t get any Mod Podge on top of the paper if you can help it.

Toss 2 headstones in a bowl of water. As you pull one of the headstones out of the water put another one in so they get a head start wetting the paper good. . . you should be working fast enough that they should not be in the water more than a couple of minutes each.

As you pick each headstone out of the water soak, rub it with your thumb, and the paper will roll right off. . . rub in all directions.

Get all the paper off but don’t rub so hard the type comes up.

This is where you start mumbling about needing to have painted more blanks.

Even after the headstone dries you can re-wet and rub off remaining paper.

After all the paper is up dry with a soft cloth.

Here are the headstones of Susanna Fields Whedbee, William T. Whedbee and all of their children.

After the headstones have dried, you can put a 1/8″ hole in each one with a drill, if the wooden blank does not already have a hole in it. . . I don’t drill the headstones before this because the paint goes on easier, the Mod Podge does not build up in the hole and until now you don’t even know that you are going to be happy with each individual headstone.

Assembling the Necklace –

For this low budget version I used 2 packages of plastic chains and 1 package of connectors (total $3).

Cut off 2 or more inches of one of the 2 chains so your headstones have plenty of room to hang.

Connect one end of both chains together.

Connect the other ends.

If you want to add a center photo to the simple necklace you can do it using the same method that you used to put the words on the headstones. Here I put a photo of Susanna on a wooden tag that I had prepared with the same colors as the headstones. I then doodled around her picture with gold and silver metallic markers and black fine line Sharpie.

The plastic connectors do not require any tools to connect to the plastic chains.

I found the little headstones hung from the chains much better if there was an extra link and jump ring connector between the chain and the headstone.

Hints –

You are going to want to lay out the necklace chains and figure out where you want your little headstones before you put them on the chains, but don’t be surprised if you have to adjust them once you try it on.

Add extra embellishments to make your “cemetery” more interesting

Finished Simple Headstone Necklace –

Advanced Headstone Necklace –

Three comments and I will do a tutorial on making this necklace.

Hope You have a creatively blessed day !

Jackie Whedbee-Mattingly

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Some times you go to a cemetery, find an ancestors headstone, and no matter what you do you can’t get a good photograph because of light, erosion or a myriad of other problems.

In this case the headstone had multiple problems. It was made of sugar dolomite which was horribly eroded and was back lit on a beautiful sunny afternoon.  It was lit so poorly that we had to run our hands across the lettering just to make sure it was the headstone we were looking for.  1500 miles away from home in a cemetery I might never get back to.

So I took a photo of Larry standing next to it .. . a plain greyish swirl of nothingness.

The solution to the problem was a grave stone rubbing.

• After doing the grave stone rubbing we returned home and went to a copy center where I was able to have the original reduced to an 8 x 10″ copy.
•  
• I took the 8 x 10 copy home and scanned it.
• Then opened it in Photoshop, although I am sure there are many other photo manipulation programs that would have worked.
• I cleaned up the headstone rubbing getting rid of crayon lines where they did not belong.
• I used the magic wand (in Photoshop) to capture just the black crayon from the print.
• I layered that over the digital image of Larry standing by the grey headstone.
• I used the dodge tool to lighten just the headstone.
• Sized it to fit the headstone
• Used “skew” to make it fit perfectly
• Set the opacity to 50% so the swirly grey of the stone showed through and the black looked more realistic.
• Collapsed the layers
• And now have a better picture of Henry Clay Mattingly’s headstone than is realistically possible.
• I have never posted the picture without the entire story so I am not trying to fool anybody
• Unfortunately nobody who has copied it and posted it to their own page has ever posted the story – or given me credit for taking the picture . . . oh well . . .

Here is the before and after … .may not be authentic but it shows the information as it was intended without any alteration to the original headstone.

Rubbing Wax Kit

While it is fine to use a Jumbo Crayola if you are only going to do one headstone rubbing, if you are going to do more than one or two rubbings it is easy to make your own Rubbing Wax Muffin that is much easier to hold.

What you need to make your own Rubbing Wax Muffin

• Muffin Pan
• Foil Muffin liner
• Black Lumber Crayon, Crayola’s or Crayons or other colors of your choice.
• Oven preheated to 250

Heat oven to 250 degrees to melt your crayons for making your Rubbing Wax Muffin

Put the foil muffin liner in the pan.
Take off labels from the crayons and
fill the muffin tin liner with the crayons.

Keep an eye on your melting wax. Stir gently until it is melted. Be careful not to spill wax when you remove pan from oven.

One Genealogy Art Project that can truly be an adventure is doing head stone rubbings.

While a photo of your ancestors headstone can be informative, a good headstone rubbing is art that says “I went there – and I connected with the past”.

To find the cemetery your ancestor is located in can be as easy as asking other family members where they are or if you are lucky you can find the location at Findagrave.com where if you are lucky you may find a picture of the headstone in question so you have a better idea of the size and condition of the headstone. Other sources of information regarding the cemetery can be found from the mortuary which is often listed in obituaries or on the death certificate. If you know the town where they died the public library often has cemetery list or the local Genealogy or History Society may be able to help you.

It can take a fair amount of planning or traveling but once you know where your ancestors headstones are, the battle is half fought.

Before you head to the cemetery you will need to put together your to-go bag with some basic supplies and while it may seem cumbersome, I can tell you from personal experience that it is easier to track your supplies down at home than to waste your valuable travel time trying to track down wide white paper.

Some items you will need include:

• Wide White Paper . . . it does help to know the size of the headstone or grave marker but you have several options. Wide freezer paper works well if it is going to be damp because you can put the wax side down or against the head stone. White wrapping paper from the dollar store or from the shipping supply department of a department store works well. For an extra large headstone white muslin may be your answer, it also folds and packs well if the finished product will have to go in a suitcase.
• Rubbing Wax . . . Most times I use black. You have the option of using jumbo crayons (package of 8 colors) or lumber crayons (available in black, blue or red at home improvement stores) or purchasing a cupcake size block of rubbing wax made specifically for the purpose (also available in black, red, brown or green).  Wax Rubbing Kit
• Tape . . . to hold the paper to the headstone. Something that will not leave residue on the stone. Wide blue painters tape is a good choice.
• Soft Brush, Spray Bottle and Towel . . . to clean dirt, debris and bird poo off of the headstone. The towel to dry stone if it is raining or possibly kneel on.
• Mailing Tube and Rubber bands . . .  large enough to protect your project. If all else fails you can wrap your finished product back around the roll the paper came on facing inward.
• Map to the cemetery and of the cemetery, available at the cemetery office to help locate the grave site.
• Mosquito/bug repellent, Sunscreen and knee pads . . . for your comfort

Call ahead to the cemetery office and make sure it is ok to make rubbings in the particular cemetery and then hope for good weather.

Never use any type of cleaning solution or stiff brush on the headstones for it may cause deterioration.

Once you arrive and have found the headstone, take note of the other graves in the immediate area. I cannot count the times that I found other relatives that I had no clue what happened to . .

With supplies in hand cut a piece of paper large enough to wrap around the face of the headstone, tape it well and using the side of the crayon or rubbing wax create your image.

When you are done I highly recommend taking the rubbings to a copy center to have copies made for other family members or reduced to a manageable size for framing, scanning or inclusion in family histories before framing the original.