HOW WE SET UP OUR DIY PHOTO BOOTH

I have a really difficult time walking past a photo booth without jumping in and making whoever I'm with take a photo with me. And after seeing one at a wedding fair in Glasgow years ago, it was pretty high up on the dream wedding list. But renting one is pretty expensive, especially if you want one of the cute vintage ones that make photo strips. So we thought about DIYing it, and had grand plans of setting up one of our SLRs on a tripod. It wasn't until we were in a photo booth in Glastonbury that was basically just an iPad with a booth built around it, I realized how easily we could actually do this. 

So this is how we set ours up—super simple and budget friendly (given that you already have an iPad). We already had the tripod and the iPad, so all we needed to get was the app, an iPad mount, and any potential props. For our props, we used a combination of these printable photo booth props, and a couple extra ones our friend Langy designed for us. All we did was print, cut and glue them to some wooden BBQ skewers. We also threw in some temporary tattoos, which were a big hit. Langy designed these too, and we just printed them out on temporary tattoo paper and roughly cut them out. As for the app, we ended up going for an app called DIY wedding, as we really liked the functions and the aesthetic. It's a really easy app to use, where all your photos get saved in a folder (or can be sent directly to a printer if you have wifi), you can lock the iPad from the app to restrict access, and you can customize the border of the photo strips. Graeme designed our borders with our anchor (which was heavily featured in our wedding), the date and the name of our venue.

I’m not entirely sure if I’ll be sticking these in a photo book or displaying them on our walls yet, but as we have all the images stored we can obviously print out however many we like, whenever we like. One thing we are for sure doing though is sending them to our guests. Obviously not everyone used the photo booth, but the ones who did will be receiving their photo strip along with our thank you cards. I mean, who doesn't love a good photo strip?

MINI STAR PIÑATA

I love piñatas. My first encounter with a piñata was when I was 11 years old. I had recently moved to Texas (from Norway), and was eating at a Mexican restaurant with my family, where they had hung up a piñata to entertain the kids. I'd never come across anything like it before and was super excited until the waitress told me I was too old for the piñata  and that it was meant for the younger kids. I didn't speak much English at the time, so I couldn't really argue against, but I do remember being quite disappointed and thinking that it was pretty unfair that I qualified for the kids' colouring in menu and crayons, but not this magical thing filled with candy, wonder and joy. Did she think I was too old for candy? I experienced my first American Halloween the same year, and trust me I was not too old for candy. Are you ever too old for candy?

As you may also know, me and Graeme are planning on getting married in 2014. It's still a good while away though, so we're very much in the beginning of the planning stages. As in, all I've decided so far is what my nails will look like, and more recently, that I want piñatas  I told Graeme I'd get my El Salvadorian friend who's going to be in the wedding to help out, as she probably had experience. Graeme said I was being racist. Either way, I figured it'd probably be an idea to get some piñata-making practise in before that day comes.

You don't really need a massive list of supplies to make a piñata  but it can be time consuming. The whole thing from start to finish took me about three to four hours on a Sunday. Since you're making your piñata shape out of cardboard and not paper mache though, this saves a lot of time. No need to wait for it to dry. You can of course also make whatever shape you want. I chose a star because a) I like stars, and b) it's a pretty simple shape. So for this project, you will need cardboard, scissors, tape, glue and of course tissue paper. I used the cardboard from a shoebox lid for this, as I wanted it a bit sturdy so that it wouldn't break in the post. If your piñata isn't travelling across the sea then I'm sure an old cereal box would do just fine.

Step 1: Draw and cut out your shapes. Your star doesn't have to be perfect, as long as the two pieces match each other. Remember that you'll also nee to cut out ten rectangular pieces to make the shape three dimensional  and that these should correspond to the sides of the spikes of your stars. Step 2: Tape all your cardboard pieces together! Reinforce where needed with extra tape. It'll just make it a little bit more difficult for the person bashing it! Step 3: Fill it! I chose to fill mine with confetti that I made with some colourful paper and a hole puncher. You could of course fill it with candy as well, or pretty much anything you like. Step 4: Attach the final cardboard piece with lots of tape, making sure your confetti (or whatever else you put in there) won't escape.

Once you your piñata's shape is finished, all that's left to do is cut up your tissue paper and glue it on! The best strategy here is to start at the bottom and work your way up. Since this shape has so many edges and corners, this part can be a bit time consuming. Once your piñata's all colourful and dressed up it'll be worth it though! Piñatas make me so happy. How fun would it be to make this for someones birthday and send it in the post? Happy birthday! Surprise! Have a piñata!  Party-in-the-post.