30th Birthday / Homemade Photo Booth

So my 30th birthday was this weekend and boy, did I celebrate! My whole family, plus high school friends, college friends and co-workers showed up and we had so much fun. One of the things that I think kept the party going was our homemade photo booth. If you've ever looked into renting one of these things, they go for anywhere from $200 to $600 per hour!

Certainly my 30th birthday was something special, but we didn't feel like spending quite that much. In total, we spent $70 and now we have the supplies to set-up the booth again at future parties. So how did we do it?

Supplies:

• We bought a $50 Japanese-style, folding room divider from Amazon.com
• Then we picked up some blue bulletin board paper from Blick Crafts
• Party City had $0.50 balloons  and the Safeway down the street blew them up for us for $0.50 each
• Lastly, we raided our old Halloween costume stash and asked some friends to bring some of their old costume accessories as well

Set-up:

• We put our digital camera on a tripod and turned on the timer. We set the timer to snap 3 successive photos with an initial 10 second delay (to give people time to prep)
• We taped the blue bulletin board paper on the wall behind two chairs to serve as a colorful backdrop
• Then we put a box of all the Halloween costume accessories next to the camera so people could choose which items they wanted to wear as the entered the photo area

Though it was homemade, I think our photo booth turned out great! Here are a few of my favorite photos from the event.