Valentine's Photoshoot Prep

The recent photo session was a lot of fun and photos turned out wonderful.  I got the idea to do a kissing booth theme while browsing through Pinterest awhile ago.  A lot of people were using these wooden crates for the booth and I just happened to have a few that I bought for my office renovation, so it worked out good.  You can find these crates at many different places--I got mine at Michaels and Home Depot.  Price was slightly cheaper at Michaels using their 40% coupon, but I thought the quality was a bit better with the ones from Home Depot.  The only thing is, they don't stock them in store so you'll have to place the order online and go pick them up later.  It took about 5 days for me, which isn't bad if you're not in a rush.  I paid about $10/crate. I also picked up 2 skinny strips of wood and 1 wide plank to complete the structure for about $5.

You can get as fancy and creative as you'd like in decorating the kissing booth.  I decided to keep mine pretty simple and added just the sign and a row of hearts.  Since I had to reuse my crate for the office, I opted against using nails or screws, but instead used heavy duty double-sided adhesive strips and duct tape.  It held well enough for the photoshoot, but one side did come apart couple days later, so my advice would be to secure it firmly with proper hardware, especially if you plan on using this to take photos of little ones.  Here are a few photos of the steps outlined:

gather all pieces: crate, 2 side sticks, and one wide board

assemble the pieces--I strongly recommend nails or screws.  I also made the mistake of putting the board facing the wrong side initially.

I added vinyl letters for the sign

I didn't have red paper on hand so I had to get creative and do a quick stencil job.

I taped a row of hearts and that's it!

All in all, it was a pretty simple project and well worth my time and effort.  It took a little longer than anticipated since I had to paint the red hearts.  Yes, it would've been a lot faster and simpler to just use red paper, but we were stuck in snow and I had to do with what I had in the house.  Oh, and I added the mason jar for the tips, and we were ready for some smooches! You can see the actual photos from the session here.