"Old School" Disposable Table Cameras

So, I'm not sure if putting disposable cameras on the reception tables is a dated trend or not. I never hear about anyone doing them on blogs anymore, but I still see the cheesy wedding decorated ones for sale online everywhere. Well, either way, I decided I wanted to do them! I'm also planning to ask everyone to upload their digital pictures for us, but I think enough of my family members still don't have digital cameras to warrant the disposable ones on the table. Plus, I've had some fun with them myself at weddings, and I'm hoping to get some interesting candids that we wouldn't get otherwise.

After making this decision though, I simply couldn't find a disposable wedding camera that I liked, and I didn't want to put ugly undecorated ones on my tables. So it was time for another DIY template!

I started by buying a 10 pack from Amazon of Fuji 400 speed cameras with the built in flash, for $34.75 before shipping, plus 1 extra camera from the drug store. We're hoping to have a total of 12 tables, and the head table doesn't need one, so 11 cameras should be just fine. Worst case we'll have 13 tables, and then the parent's table can sacrifice their camera!


After receiving my cameras, I carefully took the green cardboard sleeve off the camera, and taped it to my cutting mat, so I could photograph it with a reference to its dimensions.


Next, I opened the photo with Illustrator and resized it until it was to scale, with the inches on my cutting mat lined up with the ruler bar in the program, as shown in the purple circle below. You should be able to do this in Word, or any program that has a ruler bar.


I then traced the outline of the camera sleeve on top of the picture in Illustrator (see red lines below).


Next, I deleted the picture from Illustrator, leaving only the red outline of the sleeve, inserted my graphics, and printed the graphics on the front and the outline on the back (and be sure to make sure the printer doesn't scale it when you print, so the sleeve is the exact size you traced it).


I then just cut out the outline of the sleeve with scissors and used my x-acto knife to cut out the shapes in the middle.


Yup, I used the sexy wood grain paper for these too! I wanted to add another element in wood to the tables, and these cameras were the perfect opportunity. Then all that was left to do was glue them to the naked cameras. I used hair bands to hold them while they dried, which seemed to work well.


So there you have it, an easy way to make a template for custom camera sleeves, that will work with any type of disposable camera!

Will you be putting disposable cameras on your reception tables?