This is a companion article to the How to Create Foam Tombstones for my Halloween decorations series.  You can use this technique to add text to your tombstones.  I'm sure this technique can be used to create text in foam for other uses as well.

Materials:
Foam to carve the text into
a sharp hobby knife
A computer with a printer and paper (any kind will do)
Tape of some kind

Total Time: varies with how much text you are doing.  20 min or so for something simple like RIP but can take a long time if you do a lot of text.

Step One
Print out the text you want to carve into the tombstone.  I used Microsoft Word but any word processor program will work as long as you can change the font size of the text.  I also used the landscape function in word to print the words across the length of the page because my tombstones were 12" wide.  This gave me some space on either side to tape the paper to the tombstone.  Since I wanted to be kid friendly with my decorations and kind of silly I chose the text "Ben Dover" for my example.

Step Two
Tape the paper to the tombstone.  Make sure it's centered as close as you can by eye so the text comes out centered when we cut it into the foam.

Step Three
Holding your hobby knife at a 45 degree angle cut around the edges of the letters on the paper.  Start with the middle of the letters like B or O.  If you cut out the outside first there's nothing to hold the letter down when you cut the outside of the letter.  Once you cut the letters out you might have to pick the foam out of the letter you cut.  If it won't come out easily then take your hobby knife and cut the area that is still attached.

It's important that your hobby knife be sharp to do this.  If it's not sharp then the foam will tear instead of cutting an it won't look as good.  You can see one letter I've already done in the picture above.  The font I picked (Times New Roman) has little curvy bits near the ends of the letters (like on the back side of the E) that are really hard to carve.  In this case I just cut them as a straight line instead of a curve and they look fine.  If you don't stay perfectly on the edge of the text it won't hurt anything.  You can't even tell once it's done.

Step Four
Once all the letters are carved you can remove the paper from the foam and you're done.  Once you paint them they look just like the text has been carved in the stone.