Make A Spooky Cemetary Diorama

This diorama is fun to make and I show you a few really neat tips for using items that are found around the house like toothpicks, wire and popsicle sticks. You can achieve a nice spooky atmosphere with this diorama. I also have a small mausoleum that I made out of packing foam. If you want to know the basics for making a diorama I have a start to finish tutorial on all the basics here: Make a fantasy diorama I also have a whole series of diorama tutorials that cover things like making trees, making rocks, casting rocks, making tufts of grass and lots more here. Diorama Tutorials

Here is a look at the completed diorama.

The completed cemetary diorama

Some things to note about this diorama is the difference in color scheme. For the most part I built the shell and terrain just like I build most dioramas. But I altered the color scheme to make this one more yellow and brown. It gives the cemetary a rather dead and desolate look. Consider this whenever you are making a diorama. What will the color scheme be?

The Trees: There are three trees in this diorama. Two are easy to see but there is also a small bare on in the lower right corner. The important thing here is that the same rule applies as in the terrain. I only put a little bit of foliage on these trees to make them look almost dead. And the small one on the lower right is completely bare.

The Mortuary: (In the upper left) is simply carved out of a piece of styrofoam. A little bit of black and gray paint makes it perfect. It has a great stone texture to it.

The fence around the cemetary: I drilled holes all around the cemetary and then inserted toothpicks. Notice how some are slanted and some are at different heights. This gives the fence a really nice broken down look. The piece that crosses horizontally from toothpick to toothpick is just some black wire.

The gravestones: are simply the ends of popsicle sticks. The largest stone that is kind of squarish is a piece of painted styrofoam.

Drill or punch holes and insert toothpicks

This picture shows the diorama in progress. You can see the toothpick fence, the popsicle stick grave markers and the styrofoam mausoleum before it was painted.