Christmas Photoshoot At Home

My favorite picture from our "at home shoot"

We hired a professional photographer to take pictures of J. Our session would be a 6 month/Christmas photo shoot. When I booked the 3:30 appointment, the fact that J starts turning into a pumpkin at 4pm totally slipped my mushy mommy brain. While we were lucky enough to avoid a meltdown, Miss Prim still decided that she was NOT going to be all smiles for our photographer.

The day after our session, I came up with the idea of staging my own Christmas photo shoot for J. I own a pretty fancy camera (that I really have no idea how to use properly, but learning it is definitely on my to-do list) and I certainly have the time. So, I thought, why not have our own photo shoot and put something together for Daddy for Christmas? He needs stuff for his office!

I took to Pinterest once again....dun dun duuuuuuunnnnnnnn.

The original plan was to have J hold the wooden letters (one at a time) and get a total of five pictures. Those five pictures would then be arranged in a long frame to read I Love Dad. Cute, right?

Plan A materials

We worked on this project every single morning for the past week and I got tons of great pictures. However, only one or two of those great pictures include the wooden letters. I just could not get J to hold them still. When she finally did hold still AND look at the camera AND smile or laugh at the same time, the letters would be backwards, sideways or upside down. On to Plan B.

Plan B - pick a favorite picture and find a cute Daddy frame.

Now as I said earlier, I have a great camera but I am not a great photographer. I got the above picture through lots of trial and error.

Our "studio" consisted of the guest room, 2 boxes of Christmas lights and a package of clear hooks.

Our "studio"

Mini Command damage free hanging hooks and GE mini lights with white wire

These held all of the lights on the wall perfectly

I hung the lights, put J in her Christmas outfit, shut the lights and closed the curtains. The only lights were the Christmas lights.

I did play around with the settings on my camera and worked with a setting that automatically blurs the background a bit. But other than that, it was just trying different angles until I got a shot where her face wasn't too dark. Honestly, I wish I had more to say about how to take pictures but I've got nothing.

Anyway, the whole point of this post is that it's another easy, crafty idea. It's inexpensive and really thoughtful - her daddy will love it!

Oh oh oh! And by the way, I JUST got our pictures from the photographer and they are stunning. Considering that J was in a mood, this photographer is amazing to have captured what she did. SO THRILLED!!!

Baby Footprint Plaque

I have a love/hate relationship with Pinterest. I can pin all day long but when it comes to actually making something? Well, that usually just results in a mess in the kitchen and a whole lot of money wasted at the craft store. 

This time, however, I decided to try something relatively simple and it actually turned out pretty cute! **Note: I do not have a single artistic/creative/crafty bone in my body so it actually turned out amazingly well by my standards.**

I wanted to make something for my husband for Christmas. I figured that something for his office from Baby J would be really sweet. So we headed [aimlessly] to Michael's. I ended up with two ceramic plaques and some acrylic paint (the smaller plaque was going to maybe be a Baby's First Christmas ornament).

The idea was to have my daughter's hand and footprints on the larger plaque and just a handprint on the smaller one. Who knew that a 6 month old would decide not to unclench her fist for an art project? So the smaller plaque didn't work out, and we had to improvise on the larger one. 

For prep, I had a bowl of warm water and a washcloth ready to wash the paint off of her feet (I didn't use soap). I also squirted some paint onto a piece of cardboard to make life easier. 

Ceramic plaques and acrylic paint

I did a few practice runs on paper and I'm glad I did. First I tried finger paints. I figured, they're kid friendly and there's a lot of it. It was the worst. It was way too runny and made her foot slide all over the paper and the cardboard. 

Next I tried a giant ink pad. This made perfect footprints on paper, but you could barely see them on the cardboard. 

The last thing I tried (based on a Michael's employee recommendation) was acrylic paint. I was told that it would work best for making hand/footprints and it would wash off easily. I got Martha Stewart multi-surface acrylic paint in Poodle Skirt. 

Martha Stewart acrylic paint in Poodle Skirt

We tested out the acrylic paint on cardboard and it came out great! 

J sat in her Bumbo on the kitchen table and I used the sponge brush to paint her feet. As soon as her footprint was on the plaque I immediately wiped them off with the washcloth. All of the paint came right off. 

One foot with the paint and the other after just having been wiped off

So, of course the footprint came out perfectly on the cardboard, but not on the plaque. I actually used a q-tip and touched it up in a few spots. 

She wiggled her feet as soon as they touched the ceramic so it's not perfect, but I'm still happy with how it came out.

Turns out, the finished product will not be hung in Daddy's office. I just couldn't resist making it so girly! I actually thought about going over the feet in glue and dumping glitter on them, but I showed some restraint. 

Maybe if I do this enough times it will end up looking more Pinterest perfect. But until then, I'm just happy that I completed a project. 

Overall, this was a really easy project to make and a super cute Christmas gift for baby's grandparents. 

Or you can do the footprints in red/green and make a really sweet Baby's First Christmas decoration for the house. 

Bottom line is, if I can do this project then ANYONE can do this project!

The total cost of the project:

Plaque:           $3.99

Paint:              $1.99

Flowers:         $4.99

Jewel design: $3.99

Sponge:         $0.49

Total: $15.49 (before coupon)