Photobooth help please!

VictoriaEbli

Nicholas and I are on a tight budget but we are allowing ourselves to splurge and get a photobooth.

But we just cannot decide which one. We keep going back and forth with the pros and cons. I just wanted to see what some of you thought and experiences that you've had.

Thanks!

future-mrs

thesun (Mel) has good directions and hers turned out awesome:

1) Buy some materials (duh!). You'll need: some vintage wallpaper (if you're doing vintage) or wrapping paper plus spray glue. Old photoframes (thrift stores are your friend!). Nails, screws and super-strong glue in a caulking gun. Also, a couple of meters of sticky backed fabric hook-and-loop fastener material. Something to build the wall itself: We used two large sheets of plywood (which were fairly light weight) for the front of the wall. We made the stand (legs) itself out of thinner bits of wood... You can sort of see them here:

2) So, once you've got materials: make the two legs. You can probably do this however you deem fit, but bear in mind you'll need to transport them so don't make them too big. Ours had triangular sort of bits on the sides for support (which I don't have a picture of, but looked somewhat like this:

3) We then had two pieces of the same long wood which we joined to the frame horizontally- so that it looked a bit like like this:

Make sure whatever you use to attach these horizontal pieces (eg. screws) are removable, because you'll need to take them off and put them back on again when you set it up if the wall is going to be transported.

4) Create some 'hook' sort of bits with wood that are attached to the back of your plywood wall, so that you can slide on each of the pieces of the plywood to the frame. Here's an example:

5) Now for the fun part! Arrange your large photoframes (aka those for the interactive section of the wall) on your plywood. In ours, we had one overhanging in the middle to try and ease the perception of the two sections of plywood. Trace the inside of the frames, and cut out with a jigsaw the plywood you've marked
 
6) Cover the two front bits of your wall plywood in your wallpaper/wrapping paper. Leave an overhang on one side, facing the center, so that the middle line of the wall isn't so obvious (see how ours is really obvious in the wedding picture from the top of the middle frame up? That's because our overhanging bit got folded in when it shouldn't have!). Fold over at the edges of the rest of the paper and attach to the back. Cut off bits of paper where the frames are going to be stuck using a utility knife (so they adhere to the wood rather than the paper), and use the glue gun to attach the frames.


7) Figure out where you want each of the smaller frames. Pull off any stands that may be on the back of the frames so that they'll sit flush to the plywood, and use strips of the fabric hook and loop to attach to the back top and bottom of each of the frames. Similarly to above, use a knife to cut off bits of paper under where you want to attach them, and attach the sticky side of the hook and loop directly to the wood rather than the paper. Attach the opposite strip to the photoframe so that it will stick to the wall. Using hook and loop allows you to remove the frames for transportation and easily attach them flush to the wall during set up.

 8) To set up: Attach the legs to the horizontal plywood support frames. Slide each of the sides of the wall on, one at a time, making sure that the overhanging middle section of paper isn't folded over (very important!) thus creating a more seamless look. Stick on each of the smaller frames by pressing the frame to the wall (with hook and loop on both the frame and the wall, obviously)... and hey presto! Make sure you provide a sheet of instructions and a bunch of props for your guests, and enjoy!

beethebumble

how did you deal with lighting for your photo booth?  I'm planning to make my own as well but I'm concerned there won't be enough light.  Usually, photographers have flash lights...