A Family Photo Booth

For our church Christmas party this year my husband and I got the chance to work together to create a family photo booth.

We don’t often get to work on projects together but when we do we have a lot of fun.  My husband is pretty handy so even if my ideas are a little crazy he can figure out how to make them happen.

We had seen booths like this before and so we both knew exactly what we wanted to make.

We started with an 8’x4′ piece of plywood.

Then my husband added some left over wood from our home renovation project of doom to the bottom half to mimic a wall treatment.

Next we laid out frames in the locations that made the most sense.  (Two of the frames came from the thrift store while the other two were made from left over baseboards.)

After that my husband cut out the picture holes while I spray painted the frames gold.

Then I wall papered the top half of the booth with wallpaper that somehow I still have and was left over from my brothers bedroom back in the 90’s  🙂

And finally my husband painted the bottom half of the booth white and attached the frames.

The only thing left to do was make it stand.

My husband did this by attaching collapsing A-frame style legs to the back and then added some collapsible legs in the front to help keep it steady (in case of over ambitious photo takers).  You can see the legs on the front in the photo above…they are each attached with two sets of hinges.

Once it was finished I decided it wasn’t wide enough for a photo booth and wanted to add curtains.  So on the back of the booth we attached retractable curtain rods that reach out at the top on either side that you can slide curtains on to make the booth as wide as you need.

And…it was finished!  A family photo booth!  For fun we added a few props in the front and then it was time for pictures!

My family and I…we aren’t a very photogenic bunch…and 98% of all the photos of us in existence look like “out take” photos…like the one below…which happens to be my favorite of the day.

The look on Simon’s face…Grace holding the Santa beard that someone had colored all over…and Ruth hidden behind Rudolph’s nose…this is a classic Evans family photo.  (Which explains why we don’t have a family portrait hanging up in our house.)

At least we have fun…and building this booth was a lot of fun.

-liZ

PS:  If we ever use this booth or build one like it again there is one thing that we would change…behind each frame we would attach long pieces of black fabric so that each person would be framed in with a black background and you wouldn’t be able to see other peoples body parts inside the frames.  🙂