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Today is the last post in the Series of Photographer’s Guide to Party Photobooths. I’ve loved doing these so much I think I am going to make the photobooth posts a regular feature on Oh Happy Day! Today’s post we are playing with one of my favorite ideas: the giant copier at Kinkos (see other ideas here, here, and here.) In this project you take a baby photo of the birthday boy or girl and blow it up for a photobooth backdrop. In ours we put giant white circles on the back ground and then painted them in like giant confetti. This would work great for a birthday or even a 50th anniversary. Its a fun way to remember a special occasion and save memories.

How to make A Giant Blow-Up Photobooth

Materials Needed: Baby Picture, Photocopier at Kinkos, Acrylic Paint and paint brush.

Step 1: You’ll need to decide how wide you want your photobooth. Figure how many people you want to fit in and how tall you want it. Then figure out how many sheets from kinkos you’ll need to print off.  Kinko’s prints 48″ wide and as long as you’d like since the length comes off a roll.

Step 2: Time to lay out your backdrop. We used Photoshop to do the layout but really you don’t need it and can do a collage by hand then take in the hard copy to have blown up. Get a baby photo that has been scanned. You don’t need anything super high resolution but you’ll need it higher than the photos you’d get off the internet. Once you’ve set your layout up print it out on printer paper or take the file into Kinkos on a thumb drive. You’ll want to keep the design black and white because using a color printer makes the price go from affordable to astronomically expensive.

Step 3. Take your layouts in to Kinkos and have them blown up. Its really easy to do but have the Kinkos employee show you how if you have any questions. It costs 75 cents/sq ft so the whole cost of this was about $47.

Step 4. You’ll need to trim the border off the photo copies then its ready to paint. We added some touches of acrylic paint to make it a little more colorful.

Step 5. Hang your posters with secure tape that won’t damage the walls. Et voilà! Add a photographer and you’re ready for your party!

A special thanks to Shutterfly for sponsoring these photobooth posts. Thanks to Aubrey for the photos, to Alexis Birkmeyer for pulling it all together and to Rebecca Wright for gathering the beautiful people of San Francisco for models.

All photos by Aubrey Trinnaman for Oh Happy Day