One of the features of my 2006 Halloween display was a graveyard scene, and of course a graveyard has to have a graveyard fence. The "wrought iron" fence segments were made from furring strips and 1/2" PVC pipe, painted flat black they looked OK.
The bigger challenge was to build the graveyard fence support pillars. I'd seen some stone pillar builds using building insulation panels but had never tried to build any.
All the pillars were constructed from 1" X 1" stock, 2" X 4" 's and furring strips; the foam panels were held in place using construction adhesive.
This pillar housed a CD player and speakers, so the graveyard scene had the appropriate spooky sounds.
Shaving down the foam panels was very messy, afterwards it looked like it had snowed inside my garage!
The individual grout lines were hand-carved using a utility knife at 45 degree angles, and then textured by CAREFULLY using a propane torch passed over the foam slabs quickly; too fast and the flame wouldn't texture the foam, too slowly and the flame would burn right through the foam! Then, each pillar was painted grey, and then "speckled" using white and black spray paint cans whose nozzles had been munged up with a pin so that the paint spray came out more as paint splatters than a smooth spray, this sorta simulated a granite surface.
Then the grout lines were painted in with white paint. At night the pillars looked very realistic.
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