Christmas Photobooth Props

To go along with the North Pole decoration I made for my ward's Santa Hour, I made a bunch of Christmas themed photobooth props to make the Santa Hour pictures more fun for everyone! These props are so adorable and not just for little kids! I love the sparkly cardstock paper. Even my daughter loved these and wanted to play with them. We had to hide them in our closet in order to keep her away from them. My favorite is the bowtie. I made a few different colors of bowties I loved them so much!

Making these props takes a little bit of time, but its so worth it! So let's get started.

Things you will need:

- White Printer Paper

- Pencil

- Cardstock Paper

- Wooden Craft sticks (1 ft long)

- Gold Metallic Acrylic Paint

- Paintbrush

- Hot glue gun + glue

- Metallic peel-off letters

(I used some gold letters made for letterboxes)

How to make these props:

1. Paint the craft sticks gold. Give them a couple of layers of paint. While they are drying, continue on to the next steps.
2. Click on the picture of the prop cutouts you want to print to view it full-size.
3. Right click and save the image to computer.
4. Print the image and cut out designs.
5. Trace the designs onto cardstock color of choice (I used the glitter cardstock from JoAnn's from the scrapbooking section.)
- FOR THE NICE & NAUGHTY SIGNS:
-- Trace one arrow onto cardstock paper, then turn over the template and trace again.
--- Peel off your metallic letters and stick them on the arrows.
6. Cut out the designs from the cardstock.
7. Glue the gold stick onto the back of the cardstock design.
8. Voila! Now you have some awesome Christmas photobooth props!

 Comment below if you made these, and don't forget to post a picture of how they turned out!

Christmas DIY - North Pole

Last year, I started getting into the habit of blogging regularly, and then I totally lost my groove and stopped blogging for A LONG TIME. Well, my goal for year 2017 (I'm starting early) is to pick up where I left off and blog at least once a week!

To kick off the holidays this year, I wanted to post this super fun (and super easy!) DIY project. I'm in charge of my church's Santa Hour and wanted to make some fun decorations for that. I made some photobooth props as well as this really cute North Pole decoration.

I started out looking on pinterest to get ideas, but didn't like anything I saw. I had an idea of what I wanted, so, I went to JoAnn's fabric and craft store and bought most of my supplies there.

Things you will need:

- 3 slabs of craft ply (1/8" x 4" x 12")

- white, red, and green acrylic paint

- red ribbon at least an inch thick

- 1 wood coaster

- 1 wooden ball (flat on the bottom)

- 1 wooden pole (3 ft long)

- fake craft snow

- hot glue gun + glue

- paint brush

This project was so fun to put together! First, I painted the wooden ball white, and while I was waiting for that to dry, hot glue gunned the pole to the center of the wooden coaster and painted them white. It is important to not glue gun the wooden ball to the pole yet, I'll explain why later!

I really wanted to do a red and white stripped pattern to create a pretty legit North Pole, but I didn't want to paint any stripes, so I bought some red ribbon to make a stripe. Once the paint had dried on the pole, I hotglued the red ribbon to the pole.

I started gluing the ribbon down from the very top of the pole. I would put a little glue down on the pole, then pull the ribbon across the glue to keep it in place. Then I would pull the ribbon around the pole a little more, and glue past that point. Then I repeated that pulling and gluing motion until I was all the way down to the bottom of the pole. Then, at the bottom, I pulled the ribbon down around the base of the wooden coaster and glued it in place. I cut the excess ribbon on the top and bottom of the pole, and voila! One perfect looking red stripe!

I had some fake snow stashed away, and sprayed it onto the wooden coaster around the bottom of the pole to make it look icy. I love how this looks!

After this, I glued on the wooden ball to the very top of the pole, being sure to tuck in any excess ribbon from the top. Then, I sprayed on some fake snow to the top of the wooden ball. The snow really gives the top of the North Pole an extra touch!

Next, I hotglued the wooden plys onto the pole, making sure to stager them and put them at fun angles.

After that, I painted the plys alternating colors. I painted the words super lax and a little messy, but that is the look that I wanted. Lastly, I sprayed some fake snow onto the tops of the plys. Ta-da!

This is how it turned out:

I'm super happy with the finished product! It didn't take very long to make it (maybe 1.5 hours max), so this is a very fun, easy way to decorate for Christmas!