Photo Booth Props: Speech Bubbles

Remember how my dad made me some wooden speech and thought bubbles to use as props in our photo booth? Well, I finally got around to painting them!

I used black chalkboard paint, which was about £7 from B&Q:

They also had this chalkboard paint in bright pink and bright blue, which looked amazing, but in the end I decided to stick with good ol' classic black.

I think I put about 3 coats on in the end, just to be safe. The instructions say to use at least 2 coats, and after two coats it did look good. I'm just cautious like that.

I also painted the backs with a single coat, even though no-one will really care, and the backs wont be shown in the photos or anything. I just like it to look neat.

After they dried I had to go out and buy some chalk so we could test them out!

How cool did these turn out?? I really love them, and I can't wait for our guests to use them in the photo booth. I hope people get really creative with them!


Quick cost breakdown:

wood: free (my dad had it lying around)
labour: free (my dad did it)
paint: £7.99 (although we still have about 3/4's of the pot of paint left!)
chalk: 99p

So that makes the total cost under £10 - and we have enough left over to be able to make a few more if we want to. Total bargain, if I do say so myself!

Chalk board speech bubbles

I think I have mentioned before how much we want some chalk board speech bubbles to use as props in our DIY photo booth. I love the idea of them, and the fact that they will hopefully  help us to get some hilarious pictures!

Here's a few examples:

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Anyway, I had definitely decided that I wanted something like this for our photo booth, but when I looked into buying them, I could only find them for £30 - which is way more than I was willing to pay! To be honest, when I actually thought about it, I wasn't really willing to spend much at all on these - I'm a skinflint like that!

Anyway, I mentioned to my dad (who is quite handy with a saw) that I would be eternally grateful if he'd have a go at making me something along these lines. I believe his response at the time was "Hmmm? Oh yeah, OK" or something equally as non-committal

So imagine my surprise when a week or so later, he announced that he'd made them for me!

Speech bubble

Thought bubble

and handles on the back to hold them with

How amazing are they? All I need to do is give them a few coats of black board paint and they're ready to go! I am so excited to have these - together with the mustaches they will be brilliant in the photo booth! I think I'm looking forward to the photo booth pictures more than our actual wedding pictures!

And of course, the fact that they were free is an extra bonus. I've been thinking that we could hang them on our wall after the wedding and use them as notice boards, to write reminders and notes on.

In other news, I plan to order my wedding dress very soon! And I should probably get started on the invitations soon too. Exciting times!

Photo Booth Props

My amazing friend, Sam, bought me a present today....

Oh yes! A pack of fake mustaches! She knows me so well...
These little beauties are going to be the star attraction on my Photo booth prop table. I plan to attach thin wooden stick to them and then let the guests go wild. I couldn't resist a little practice shot though...

Attractive, yes? In reality, the stick will be much thinner. This paintbrush was the only thing I could find to use at the time!

 I also picked up this fairy wing headband thingy to use as a prop - purely because it was cute, and only 99p.

A while ago, Sam also bought me this set of comedy false teeth to use as Photo Booth props:

I'm not sure if they will work though - there is the hygiene aspect to consider. We couldnt just leave the teeth out for people to use, since after the first person has used them, no-one else will want to have them in their mouths! I did consider having sterilising wipes or something but I think it would end up being too much bother. What I might do though, is hand out one set each to a few key people for a couple of photos, rather than leaving them for eveyone.

I'm going to be on the hunt for more props for the next few months. I'm hoping for some interesting hats, funky glasses, and maybe one or two masks. I'm still planning to make some 'Smiles on sticks' and also some chalkboard speech bubbles.

I'm so excited to see how the photo booth pictures turn out!

Mustache on a stick - version 2.0

OK, everyone has seen the good old mustache on stick. They are the bread and butte of wedding photo booth props. I personally love a good fake mustache. I think it makes every picture 10 times better!

For example:

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Amazing. Anyway, Delightfully Engaged posted about these possible photo booth props from PhotoJoJo, which are the new and improved, futuristic version!

 

 Clear, pocket sized paddles with pictures printed on them! Very cool, and very funny. These would be amazing as photo booth props, or even on your tables for guests to play about with. They could even be bridesmaid or groomsmen gifts. I like the fact that they are clear, so you don't have the big stick in your photos, and I also like that they can be used closeup on yourself, or you can hold them up to use on people who are further away, meaning you could get some hilarious shots of people without them even knowing.

At $10 each, or the whole set for $30, I won't be buying them (I'll stick with my DIY, cheap and cheerful mustaches, thanks) but they are still very, very cool and they would certainly add something special to your photos!

Smile on a Stick!

I came across this picture on Offbeat Bride:

From Offbeat Bride

and I was conflicted. On one hand, this picture freaks me out. A lot. It's so creepy! On the other hand, how cool would these be as props for our photo booth?! 

Apparently they are called "smile on a stick" and you can buy them here for $5. But I think you could make them fairly easily yourself! A cut out picture of the bottom half of a face, stuck on a stick and voila! 

I think I'm going to look for some suitable faces, or I might ask my very talented sister in law if she could draw a few for me. 

Here's a few more examples:

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Santa on a Stick! Amazing! My grandad has a very distinctive, very ginger beard, so I'm tempted to have one a bit like the above, but with a ginger beard. I can imagine my family would have tons of fun with that! 

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Different colours, and even a frown!

Even a pumpkin one! 

A clown one, which would completely freak out my sister since she is terrified of clowns!

And a nice, romantic one!

I'm a little bit in love with these now that I've gotten over the creepiness, and I think it would be great to have a couple of different expressions or features.

The best things in life are free

The plan for our weding is to find everything for as little money as possible.
It takes a long time, because it involves researching every supplier or company and comparing them with every other supplier or company in the area, then comparing the cost of them with the cost of making something ourselves.

But every now and again, something wonderful happens and we find things really easily - and sometimes it's even more wonderful because they are free!

For example, we were given a huge wooden photo frame by a friend of my mums. It was actually handmade by her father and she didn't have room for it when she moved house, but wanted it to be used as opposed to being thrown away.

It will be perfect for our signature frame, which we are having instead of a guestbook, like these:

We will just get a large piece of card and stick a picture of us in the middle and display it in the frame. We will put out a pot of pens (we are thinking lot's of colours instead of just black) and ask people to sign the card. After the wedding we will put a piece of glass over it and hang it on our wall.

The frame is a made of dark wood and I'm considering sanding it down and painting it white, but I've not quite decided yet.

Another free thing we got this weekend, was the fabric to make the backdrop for our photo booth. My mum had a bag lying around with 2 sheer, white curtains. They have pink flowers on the bottom, but you wont be able to see them anyway so we don't mind.

Since they are sheet, we might use both of them, one on top of the other, to make it more opaque. But if we have it hung on a plain white wall, it won't matter and we can just use the one. My plan at the moment is to paint some sort of design on the top half of the curtain so that it will be visible in the background.

While we are on the subject of our photo booth - the third thing we got for free this weekend was some sombreros to put in our photo booth prop box. We got them from our local Freecycle group.

 Here's my friend and hairdresser, Mark, modelling a sombrero. Doesn't he look lovely?

If you're trying to save money on your wedding, I would definitely reccommend joining your local Freecycle group. It is amazing how many things you can recycle after others have finsihed with them - and it is an easy way to pass all the things you collected for your own wedding on to someone else after you're done!

Click here to find out more about Freecycle.

Not wedding related, but we also got this picnic basket from Freecycle - how cute is this?

It's a shame it is raining so I can't go out and use it yet!

Say Cheese!

I really, really want a photo booth at our wedding. Like, more than I want the dress or the the flowers, or the cake. I really want one.

But I can't have one. :-(

Have you seen the prices of photo booth rental?? It's extortionate! Up to £1000 for only 4 hours rental. And there is a limit on how many photo's you can have taken! Ridiculous.

I still want one though. Unfortunately it does not fit in our "get everything for as cheap as possible" plan. Or does it....?   *insert evil genius laugh here*

Because when I realised that a photo booth was way out of our budget, I started looking for alternatives. From what I could tell, lots of people had gone down the route of asking their photographer to set up a corner of the room and take pictures of people. Easy! But I don't want to have to pay my photographer any more than I already am. Besides, it's not the same when a person is taking the photo as opposed to a faceless, non-judging machine.

Then I heard about people setting up the corner of the room themselves, sticking a camera on a tri-pod and asking a bridesmaid or a friend to man it for a few hours. Well, that solves the money problem - but I don't want some of my friends and family to be stuck manning the photo booth all night. I want them to be having fun inside it!

So, back to the drawing board. Or, more realistically, back to Google! I was still sure I wanted a photo booth, I just don't want to pay a lot for it! Here's some pictures of DIY photo booths - how much fun do they look?

Looking at thousands of pictures like these just made me more determined that we should have a photo booth. And then, a miracle happened...

During one of many, many Googling sessions, I clicked on a website that had a link, and that link lead to an article, and the article sited a source and the source provided another link ( I could go on for a while - basically, I'm trying to explain that I don't remember where I found the original suggestion!) and the final link took me to...

Spark Booth!

The most amazing program ever made, as far as I am concerned. Some technical genius has actually made some software that turns your computer and webcam into a photo booth.

I have never been so excited in my life as I was when I realised that not only would we now be able to have a photo booth - but it would be really cheap!

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Basically, we could install the software on my laptop (which has a built in webcam) and then set it up in the corner of the room, with a ncie backdrop of some kind. The guests just stand (or sit) in front and press space bar to begin. you can see yourself on the screen before you press the space bar, so it's easy to make sure your in the right spot. It then takes 4 pictures a few seconds apart and displays them in your chosen photo strip.

You can customise almost everything -the backgroung, the message on screen, the timings, the photo strip design. Loads of things to play about with - I definitely recomend downlaoding the 10 day trial to play with. Hours of fun!

As you can see, I had a play around with it. Please excuse my facial expression in the first shot - I wasn't expecting it to start! Also - how huge does my hand look in the last shot??

Anyway, Spark Booth will automatically save all the photo strips to your computer (and all individual photos if you want) and you can also set it to print out the strips or upload them in a site, such as Facebook.

How cool is that? I really want the photos to be put straight on facebook - that will save us having to buy a load of paper to print them out. Unfortunately, the long strip style I tested above doesn't upload to Facebook very well, so I will have to have 4 shots in a square instead, but that's ok.

I will also have to check if the venue has wi-fi -otherwise the photo's will have to be uploaded the morning after.

So to have this DIY photo booth I will need some sort of back drop - I like this painted sheet type one:

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I think that would be quite cute in purple and green!

I'll also need the laptop (check) with webcam (check) and some sort of lamp/spotlight since my webcam doesn't have a flash. That's easy enough to do though.

I will also need a whole load of props

I think I've mentioned before how partial I am to fake moustaches. I plan to make some out of felt and have them on sticks. I'll also grab some hats, glasses, empty frames etc from local charity shops. And I really want some whiteboards or chalkboards shaped like speech bubbles! How easy would these be to make, do you think? Also, which is better, whiteboard and pen of blackboard and chalk? Personally I like the old school feel of chalk, but whiteboards might be easier and cleaner...

And my very last dilemma is whether to have the photos in colour or black and white...? I'm leaning towards black and white as everyone looks better in a black and white photo!

Oh, I almost forgot! Spark Booth is $59 to buy, and you can download a free 10 day trial - from what I can tell, the only thing different about the trial is that the watermark won't be on your final pictures.

I will keep looking to see if I can find any similar software that is a bit cheaper (or better yet, free!) before I decide to use this one. But now that I know it's an option, I can get excited about having a photo booth! Hurray!