To make this charming and eerie tiny graveyard, you will need: an aquarium, preferably with a hood having a light (this is a great way to re-use a cracked aquarium, but make sure the bottom two inches will still hold water); Sculpey bake-hard clay; potting soil; twigs and tiny branches; grass seed (two tablespoons or so); acrylic paints; and a small paintbrush. If you wish to add a pumpkin field to your cemetery, you will need some tiny leaves of artificial ivy, or a couple of small ivy plants having the smallest leaves you can find. This is the apartment-dweller's answer to a night walk in a real graveyard.
The first week of October is the time to begin your Pocket Cemetery, so that the grass is the correct height by Halloween!
First, get out the Sculpey clay and model some tombstones. Uncialle's Pocket Cemetery is in a tall 25-gallon tank, and her tombstones range from one to two inches high. You can roll the Sculpey out with a rolling pin until it's about 3/8" thick and cut out the tombstone shapes with a knife, then softening and blending the edges with your fingers. With a pin, scratch in some lines of "engraving." The stones are too tiny for you to write words on them, but a couple of lines of fine parallel scratches per stone will suggest that there are names written there. Try rounded and squared-off shapes, as well as crosses and doves. Bake the tombstones in a 340-degree oven until they turn uniform brown. When they are cool, paint all with a base coat of white. Then shade them with various washes and tints of gray, until they look weathered. Uncialle's Pocket Cemetery has a pumpkin field in one corner, so if you wish to add this, make some tiny Sculpey pumpkins in scale with the tombstones. Bake them brown, and paint them first white, then orange (the brown baked-Sculpey color must be covered up to have the orange look clear and bright). Set the pumpkins and tombstones aside while you work on the landscape.
Inside the aquarium, create a small, Halloweenish world all your own! Pour the potting soil into the aquarium, to the depth of at least two inches, and contour it to your satisfaction. Uncialle's Pocket Cemetery has a hill on one side, a two-inch stone wall halfway across, a tiny pond made from a dish painted black, and a field of pumpkins beyond. The cemetery is on the hill. The pumpkins appear to be invading the lower part of the cemetery. But do what looks good to you! After you have contoured your "ground," very gently water it until the soil is saturated. Now, scatter grass seed thickly on the soil, and press the seed down gently with the back of a spoon. Do this BEFORE you put in anything else, or you will have grass seed all over your gravestones! Then, insert twigs with side branches, to simulate bare late-fall trees. Uncialle uses locust-tree twigs about 10" long, because these have extremely fine side twigs, and a branching habit that makes twigs look like real miniature trees. Then, insert your Sculpey tombstones into the soil. Remember, sometimes very old stones lean spookily! Plant your ivy, or arrange the artificial ivy leaves, and scatter the pumpkins among them. Simply turn on the aquarium light for 8--12 hours a day, keep the soil moist, and by Halloween, your Pocket Cemetery will have a carpet of fresh, green grass.
This is a project the whole family can work on, or it can be just for you. It makes the most intriguing party-table centerpiece! Uncialle loves hers, because it is a place where the imagination can wander freely and safely into the dark fire of Halloween. Uncialle puts her Pocket Cemetery in the basement after Halloween. The grass withers, and the artificial "pumpkin" leaves don't care. Next October, she simply adds water with a bit of dilute liquid fertilizer, more grass seed, and the cemetery lives once more!
Now for the fun! There are countless things you can add. Go wild in a miniatures shop! In her Pocket Cemetery, Uncialle has placed a tiny red wagon with two pumpkins in it, as if a small child had visited, and perhaps run home, frightened. Two tiny, glowing red LEDs are monster eyes, hiding in the shadow behind a tombstone. Miniscule black paper bats hang from "invisible" sewing thread in the tiny trees. A tipped-over vase beside a tombstone spills out dried flowers, while a miniature white pitcher holds "fresh" flowers. Tiny stones can create a stone wall. You could even put in miniature people, or a goblin, or a mummy going for a stroll! A very creepy addition: bury a very small (to scale) plastic skeleton under about an inch of soil, right next to the glass, and place a tombstone in the proper position for it. One final touch: On Halloween night, Uncialle takes out the standard light bulb in the tank hood and replaces it with a blue one. Instant moonlight! Have fun, my dear friends, and haunt your tiny cemetery in your imagination, because that is what Halloween is all about! 
Previous Haunt: Making Heads on Pikes
Uncialle's Fly-by-Night Tips for Fast Haunting
Strange Things of the Real Universe
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