# Driveway Dilemma



## scare-m (Jul 16, 2007)

This years cemetery is going to be placed over my driveway.

Does anyone have any insight as to what I can place over a large portion of asphalt to make it look like earthen ground without spending a fortune?

I thought alot of leaves might do the trick but I fear they would get blown away and fog isnt nearly as dense or plentiful as hoped.

I am going to be placing all my tombstones and coffins on the groundcover also, so I also have an issue of how the tomstones will stand up as I usually stake them with rebar into the ground.

I just cant leave it looking like a paved driveway with tombstones on it and it MUST be in the location of the driveway

Thanks


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## Darkside (Aug 6, 2007)

What about bulap with leaves on it. Just a first thought.


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## JohnnyL (Aug 17, 2006)

I agree, look into burlap or heavy DORP (search for it here on the forum), and cover with leaves/branches, fake plants/real plants (ferns etc), and then for your tombstones you can attach them to pieces of plywood so they're stable, and then cover the plywood with the above.

Hope this helps!


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## AzKittie74 (Aug 10, 2007)

or maybe if you don't mind the clean up, just spread some dirt, easy to get and if you have a open lot near your house it could be free!


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## THeme ssaGE (Jul 16, 2006)

We all learned how to paper mache in 3rd grade...I dont know how much experience you have in mache but...

I think you should buy a roll of chicken wire.

Cut out a few large sections of it...and form the chk. wire into an earthy, mountanous shape. Keep working it till it looks realized. Let the chicken wire work for, especially when mimicing nature.

Use spray adhesive glue (Super 87) to spray one side of a newspaper sheet and then lay right on to your chichen wire forms.

Do a layer of paper mache on top of that, and then paint it!


I don't want to bog you down in what seems like a huge project. It's really not...I'm sure you can visualize how real it would look.

I think 2 or 3 earthy, rocky mounds of chk. wire mache......with leaves and branches and even real dirt is gonna absolutely blow away the neighborhood.


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## Otaku (Dec 3, 2004)

I have the same problem. I use a 24" picket fence around the graveyard and cover the ground with leaves inside the fenced area. I have one fogger blowing into the fenced area and another on the side. For the grave markers - I use wooden crosses - I attach an "L" bracket to the bottom of the cross and screw that to a 12" square of particle board. I have some of the markers leaning a bit to one side to get a neglected look. The leaves cover the boards. Here's a pic of the 2005 graveyard:

http://halloweengallery.com/displayimage.php?pos=-3749


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## ScareFX (Aug 18, 2004)

I get a bag of compressed peat moss to use for "dirt". A little goes a long way and it is easily blown or raked away when the day is done. I put some around this groundbreaker head last year.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/101/308910006_46f4ff64ef_o.jpg

For tombstones, I glue them to a piece of wood slightly wider than the stone itself. I paint the wood flat black and drill a hole on each side. Then I drive 10" spikes (which are used to secure landscape timbers) through the holes into the ground. I then cover the exposed wood with some leaves or dirt.

One benefit of this method is the stones will easily stand on their own on a hard surface. So you can set up a graveyard display in an interior space or on a driveway if you wanted or needed to.


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## Long_Tom (Oct 7, 2006)

If your tombstones are already set up to sit on stakes, you can get some pieces of rebar and bend them into "L" shapes, then slip them in the normal stake holes. Weight the bottom leg of each L with a brick.

You can also do the same trick as Otaku does with the L brackets and boards; just space the L-brackets so that they fit into the existing rebar holes in your tombstones.


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## michael myers (Sep 3, 2007)

For hard surface tombstones, I have used pieces of 1 X 5 treated decking planks with 2 or 3-16 penny nails driven completely thru them. Lay the boards down, nails up, and your tombstones should press right down on the exposed sharp side of the nails. Do be careful not to step on them, that can hurt a little, and I did not let any ToTs get around where I had the nail/board support (made sure they were blocked off) for safety reasons.:jol:

Another idea for covering (very cheap) is to bag your grass clippings and pour them around on what you are trying to cover. I used that trick a couple of years back to make a ground breaker bucky look a little more realistic. I wish that I had the photos to show, but the ex decided she didn't need them, and tossed them out, oh well...


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## Liam (Mar 23, 2007)

You could also lay painter's paper (that heavy broen paper normally used to mask painting areas - $10 at Lowe's for a 150' roll) down on the driveway then cover it with leaves, dirt, whatever. There's a thread some around here where someone used it to simulate a cave for a haunt, and I would imagine you could achieve the same effect easily. Crumple it up, lay it down, and you should be good to go.

Now that I'm talking about it, I may actually do the same thing...hmmmm....


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## HrdHeaded1 (Sep 20, 2007)

Howdy... 
I would get a few old sheets.. spray them with spray adhesive, and poor dirt on them. Have done this in the past, works fairly well. Shake off excess dirt. you can also add leaves ect. When your haunt is done, roll or fold up and store it like anything else. I also use this method but with burlap usually for the look of fresh graves.

Jen


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## fg4432 (Sep 18, 2007)

Cheap items:
Dirt
Leaves
Fabric/Sheets from 2nd hand stores
(color is unimportant if you are covering with dirt and leaves to some degree)
Grass clippings

Source for other cheap/free items. www . freecycle . org
Find your local area and it uses Yahoo Message Boards basically to find new homes for items that still have a use but not for the current owner. Good way to get rid of items that are just sitting around that would most likely end up in the garbage too.

Here is my driveway with an idea, so you could make it fit whatever possible way your setup really is. I am pretty partial about the non-flat driveway look so whatever you do to make it look less flat would be interesting to find out if you can show some pictures of your driveway after it is set up.

Black plastic cuts down wind. Fog might have a chance to stick around. Branches change your suburbia look. Lighting sets your atmosphere. Props complete it.

See this link as a picture is worth 1000 words...

http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=1453723449&size=o

However, this is only ten minutes of work and one point of view. I would invite anyone to chime in with any tweaks.


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## BudMan (Mar 6, 2007)

Read somewhere about dyeing old bath towels brown and laying them on top of mound shaped chicken wire.


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## HibLaGrande (Sep 25, 2005)

I would stretch that cotton spiderweb stuff across the drive way and throw leaves on it.


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## Gothic Nightmare (Jul 19, 2007)

ummm....nothing looks more like dirt than, dirt. And leaves. Keep it simple. It will be dark anyway and I'm sure most TOTs won't think twice about it. Have fun!


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## Nchaunting (Sep 13, 2007)

Start mowing some lawns and keep the old grass by the time Halloween is here you should have some old brown grass. Add some leave and some dirt and there u go free and dirty, lol


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