How we made a Photo Booth

So church asked us to make a photo booth. If you don't know what one is, it's so you can do this:

We're theater people, so naturally we looked at this like a set. We could make it like a theater flat, and then cut windows into the front and put frames on it. A little more complicated than that, but that was the general idea.

We started with the size: 7 feet tall by 8 feet wide. There was a lot of discussion about how to build it, using pvc piping or whatnot. We finally landed on traditional theater construction. If you're using this so you can build your own, you can learn more about that type of building here. I would recommend a 'hard' flat, but a soft flat would work too if you want to save a buck. You can make two flats and attach them so it will fold and store smaller.

Disclaimer - making one of these takes basic carpentry and basic sewing skills! But I believe in you.

We dug around in the drama dept. bin at church and found two flats we could sacrifice. One was 4' by 8', the other 3' by 8'. Perfect! Once we tied them together, we would have a 7' by 8' flat. We also found an 8' long piece of molding to use for a chair rail. Painted it white.

The next step was to figure out some frames. Garage sale time! I would have liked some round ones, but you make do with what you have. We ended up with 4 frames. The rule of thumb is variety is king! We removed the innards (some god-awful 'art' from the 70s) and spray painted the frames flat white. You could use a matte white also, but I prefer the look of flat. I'd stay away from gloss, but that's my personal preference.

The trick with getting a good paint job with spray paint is to do lots of thin coats. Too thick at once and it will drip! Also, watch out for leaves, like the one that's attacking my frame. Remember good ventilation and all that... 

So we had our giant flat, our frames and I went to the fabric store with one of the pastor to pick out the fabric. That was fun, haha. I don't know if he'd ever been in a fabric store before! Anywho, this is what he picked. 

Fun summery colors for the summer event this is for! So I did iron it, (you can iron on your table if you throw down a few towels first) but I now think that I wasted my time. It probably helped get out the big creases though. 

I got 3 yards of the yellow for the top (60" wide material) and 1.5 yards of the stripey stuff. I needed the stripey to be 3' wide and 8 feet long, so I cut my piece in half, long ways to get two long strips 3' wide. Then I sewed them together to get a single strip that was 3' wide and 3 yards (9 feet) long. You'll need to do the math to make sure you get enough material to cover what you want, and pay attention to where your seams hit!! I've found that it helps me to do little drawings of how things will work out. 

So you should have two long pieces, one 5ft x 9ft, and another 3ft x 9ft. Sew em together! Now you have one ginormous piece 8ft x 9ft. ps- you can totally do this with the same type of fabric so it all matches. Just keep in mind that if it has a pattern, you'll need to buy extra so you can match the patterns up.

Ok, next step! Once we had the flats built and tied together (we screws a long 1/2" x 1" piece of wood along the side and added small pieces of wood to tie the two together in the middle) we needed to figure out where to put the pictures! We just places the frames around until we had a layout we liked. Pay attention to how high they are, unless you're intending on having boxes available. 

Then, on the back of the flat, we cut and places wood 1x3s so that we'd have something to staple the frames to. We used the same techniques for building the flats to get the 1x3s in place. Make sure it's squared up! It ended up looking like this when we were done. You can see the top part is much more divided up from the bottom. 

Our already has the fabric on it because we're recycling old flats. Don't worry if your doesn't at this point.

K. Now flip it up and cut Xs in your window openings. Go right to the corners. (skip this step for new flats. If you have made 'hard' flats, now would be when you'd cut open holes in the plywood)

Next, roll back the triangles from your X, so you have several layers thick and staple the fabric back onto they 1x3s. We're using a pneumatic stapler, but a regular hardware stapler would work too. An office stapler won't. Sorry! 

Now flip it around an put it on some tables or sawhorses. You'll want to be able to access it from all sides. It should be face up. Lay out your big, beautiful fabric!! We knew we wanted our chair-rail to be 30" high, so we marked that distance on the flat, on both edges. Then we lined up the seam between the two different types of fabric on those marks. We folded it several times, so the staples would have something to bite into and stapled first at that seam. Then, using the artist method for stretching a canvas, we worked our way around and stapled the whole sha-bang down, pulling it tight as we went. (that's my man!) 

Our line was a little wonky, but we covered it up with the chair rail, making sure we got it level when we nailed it down to the sides and the one wood cross piece in the center. We used finishing nails that wouldn't leave big marks. 

Now flip it upright again, and cut out your holes, stapling the fabric back like we had to do earlier. 

Next, flip it around to the front side and nail your frames down! Make sure to use a level. 

We're going to paint the fabric that shows inside the frames white. We're also going to use traditional theater bracejacks to keep it upright. (there's info at the bottom of that link) These normally need to be sandbagged.

The last step is to set it up in front of some black drapery so there's a good background and then take a bunch of pics!!! Don't forget to get lots of fun and silly props for people to use. I'll post pictures from the event. I hope everyone will like it!

Got any suggestions for how to make this better? Let me know. Or if you have something you're not sure how to make, ask away!! I love a challenge. ;)