Crypt plaques for the Mausoleum

Tonight, I worked on the crypt plaques for the Mausoleum. There are going to be nine in total, and they measure 20"x12" for the center column of crypts, and 19"x12" for the outer columns.

I discovered today that I don't have to transfer a design to the foam in order to rout it out - I had considerable success just printing the design out from my printer, taping it to the foam, and routing out the lines through the paper. The routing attachment for the Dremel tool is fantastic for detailing foam like this.

Part of the fun of this particular job was coming up with names for all the sinister Blackwood clan - an entire posse of villains! I already had Marius Blackwood, the evil ringmaster who features in Madame Sarita's Spirit Parlour, but I needed eight more family members. Since these other family members may make appearances in future years, I wanted to get it right now, so I trolled through a lot of baby name sites and goth sites to find good names for the bad guys.

The other consideration, of course, was to try to find names that are unlikely to be the names of our younger visitors, just so they don't walk in and see their name on a crypt. Can't be sure we'll avoid that, but with only a few exceptions, I picked pretty esoteric and gothic names that are unlikely to be the names of visitors.

So here are the family members who are enshrounded in this spooky mausoleum:

• Marius Blackwood - 1850-1888
• Lucretia Blackwood - 1852-1911
• Harmagin Blackwood - 1822-1873
• Malachai Blackwood - 1847-1934
• Rowan Blackwood - 1860-1915
• Abigail Blackwood - 1873-1894
• Gabriel Blackwood - 1847-1867
• Mina Blackwood - 1881-1889
• Damien Blackwood - 1890-1933

Tonight, I finished the crypt plaques for Marius, Rowan, and Mina. They look pretty good - I can't wait to see them detailed and attached to the crypt wall.