Kissing Booth Valentine’s Day Photo Shoot

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So for Valentine’s Day I thought it would be super cute to do a little Valentine’s Day photo shoot with my boys. I was trying to think of cute ideas, and cute outfits, and then I remembered I am broke 99.9% of the time.

So, since I knew there was no way that I’d be able to get into a mini shoot with a professional photographer or buy cute new outfits, I decided to wing it at home. I don’t mind taking their pictures on my own at home, but I do try to make them look somewhat decent.

I decided on a kissing booth. I figured we could make it for pretty cheap since it would be so small, then I could use it for other things too later on like a lemonade stand or something of the sort. I went looking on my favorite website (Pinterest) for inspiration. And boy did I find some! There are great kissing booths on there like this one that inspired my shoot, and the link has a tutorial on building the booth!

Of course, I somewhat followed her tutorial. I grabbed a wooden crate from our local craft store here and got our other wood from Home Depot. With the help of my husband, within a few hours our booth was assembled and painted. The fun part of building it was left up to me…weathering it. The wood was so light that you couldn’t tell that we had taken sand paper to it at all. So I got creative. I ended up using an old toothbrush and an ink stamp pad. I got ink on the toothbrush and swiped it across the wood lightly and quickly so that it wouldn’t get too much ink in one spot. Any place that seemed a little too dark, I smeared with the sand paper again.

I bought a couple of decorations from our craft store as well. Some fake flowers and the heart garland. Looking back on it, I wish I would’ve bought a few more decorations, but my total for cost of supplies was a little over $20. That was my budget and I really didn’t want to go over it. We don’t have any Valentine’s Day decorations here already, otherwise I would’ve just used those.

For the lettering, I used my personal cutting machine at home and some vinyl. Since the vinyl sticks, it’ll be easy to reuse this prop for other photos. After taking a few test photos, I realized that I completely forgot to put “Kissing Booth” at the top. DUH! That was the whole reason for the shoot! I also realized that my husband had made it a little tall to use for a photo prop, so it was a bit difficult to get the whole booth in the photo all the time.

My toddler, of course, didn’t really want to cooperate and it was difficult getting nice pictures of him. I also realized after the test photos that the sheet I was using as a back drop was wrinkled! Gahhhh it was pretty frustrating to say the least, but once I finally got everything worked out it was a lot of fun. I also didn’t care much for the back drop and wish I had something else to use like a dark stain weathered “fence.”

I did however manage to get some cute ones of my little baby. Even with his wild hair! I had him in his Bumbo while my husband held the chair bottom (that’s another reason you can’t see the whole thing!)

I think the hardest part of this shoot was trying to get my oldest to understand staying behind the booth. He kept wanting to come to the front of it where I was.

My tips to you if you decide to try this one:

• Make sure your kids are well rested and fed. This will make for happier pictures.
• Take a couple of test photos to make sure you are happy with lighting/back drop/position.
• Don’t skimp out on cute props to add to this! (Jar full of money, Hershey’s Kisses, lipstick kisses)
• Make sure you have outfits picked out ahead of time.
• If you aren’t happy with your photos at first, play with editing software!

Will you be trying your Valentine’s Day photo shoot? Who will you give the photos to? Tell us below!