Gravestone Headboard DIY

I lost all my original photos form the crafts I've been doing to a Mama glitch, so I had to start over. Thankfully, I hadn't begun painting with black yet, so you can get the general idea of how I started.

My dad saves large sheets of cardboard to turn into targets, so he let me have one to use.
I also used a pencil,
eraser,
sheets of paper,
tape measures,
an X-acto knife,
nitrile gloves,
a can of grey spray paint,
a can of black spray paint.

I cut the top of the cardboard freehand into an arch. Then I took it outside and gave it several coats of grey paint for full opacity. It sat in the garage a few weeks while I did the stencils.

I'm a perfectionist, so I measured everything to find the best size for the letters. Each capital letter is two inches tall and one to one-and-a-half inches wide, each lower case letter is one to two inches tall and one inch wide. I drew out the letters in the back of my sketchbook and cut them out with an X-acto Knife.

Here are two completed stencils:

The stencils were then spaced approximately four inches from the outer edge of the cardboard...

...and spray painted. HERE was my first word and got a little gloopy, but I quickly figured out the correct distance and angle to hold my paint can. My name was the next stencil and is blocked out to protect my identity.

Completed! I wore nitrile gloves through the whole project to protect my hands from paint stains.