Memento Mori - Remember Death Etcetera Tombstone

Of all of the Halloween samples I made this summer, this one represents me the most. I was so excited to have the opportunity to work with these new Tombstone Etcetera Tag overlays from Tim Holtz and Stampers Anonymous.  There are so many different things you can do with them, from paper to paint, to Ideaology to Sizzix Alterations to Stamps. Really, the ideas are endless.They come in two sizes. This project is using the Small Etcetera Tombstone, and there is a Medium Etcetera Tombstone as well.  They are a GREAT price point!

I adore old, really old graveyards and tombstones.  Probably because here in California we just mostly have the little flat, marble headstones with zero personality. When I traveled to Boston with my mom and sister, we visited many old Puritan cemeteries. 

We noticed a lot of skulls and bones depicted on them, and learned the Puritans view of death, mortality and the transience of life is evident in the symbolism on the headstones, It was then that my former reticence about skulls changed and now I am all about the symbolism of bones and skulls in my Halloween decor. More on that later.

For my tombstone I decided to try and make it look like one of the ornate, old markers I had seen in cemeteries back east.

 To accomplish this I attached the overlay pieces onto the Etcetera tag with Distress Collage Medium. Then I painted it all with a coat of Black Soot Distress Paint.
Next I turned to the Sizzix Alterations 3-D Impresslits Medallion, Mini Provencial and Provencial. I cut them out of a 110 lb black heavystock.

To fit the mini Provincial around the inside of the arch, I cut between each of the points almost to the back of the piece then I slightly overlapped them when I attached it to the inside of the arch.

 The bottom Mini Provincial piece just got placed along the inside edge of the top. In the middle I adhered the small Medallion.

Memento Mori, the practice of remembering that death comes to us all and that life is fleeting, is a long held view in the Christian church.  Starting the the Middle Ages, the term and symbols were used on grave markers to remind the living of their mortality.

This center area I covered with a whole piece of the black heavystock. But before I attached it, I stamped and embossed the term Memento Mori -- meaning"Remember Death"using letters from the stamp set called Worn Text CMS156. I stamped and embossed it with black embossing powder several times on the stamp platform before I adhered the paper. I wanted the words to stand out like they would on a marker.  

I also stamped and embossed the skull and crossbones from the Tim Holtz Regions Beyond CMS 274 stamp set onto some black heavystock adhered to chipboard and then I cut it out. I mounted this on the middle of the main section above the wording and on top of a pair of Ideaology metal wings. I used a set from the regular Ideaology line, but there are some amazing new wings called Angelic as part of the Christmas release that would be fabulous too! 

At the bottom, I attached the large provincial along the top of the center and the base section of the piece.

There is a beaded edge along the bottom of the Provencial Impresslit and so I cut those off of several pieces and attached them around the middle section to give it a finished look.

 They are very thin strips but I felt like it gave the piece just the detail it needed.

An additional detail I added were the decorative floral centers on the large Impresslit Medallions. I fussy cut them out with my Tonic Snips and attached them before adding some of the Crackle Texture Paste.

Once all of the pieces were in place and adhered the entire piece was painted with a layer of Black Soot Distress Paint. I then sprayed over the top a bit of Distress Resist Spray so that black specks would show through the next few layers to give a bit of a feel of granite.

 Winged Skulls or "death's head" symbol represents death and mortality and has been in use since the medieval period, but was prevalent in graveyards back east with a large Puritan influence.

To age the pieces I smeared some Ranger Opaque Crackle Texture Paste on top of the whole thing and let it dry and crack. In some places it didn't crack as much as it just added clumpy texture which was all fine with me as it was my first time. I've since improved my technique. I was still pleased with the texture anyway.

 I then painted the entire piece with the "uncolor" Pumice Stone Distress Paint. I worked the paint onto the piece as well as wiping it off the stamped images and allowing some of the black underneath to show through.
Once painted I covered the entire thing in Distress Collage Medium and then added lots of Distress Crayon to the top in Hickory Smoke, Ground Espresso, Vintage Photo, and Peeled Paint.