Thursday, December 17, 2009

"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?

13 comments:

  1. I would have never, ever thought of doing this! What a great idea! I love the cameras on the tables, but haven't seen them in awhile. Great idea for all of the guests that haven't quite moved into the digital era.

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  2. They look great! I'm really impressed :o) I've also loooved that wood grain paper ever since I saw Mrs. Apple Cider use it.

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  3. Wow! Mad props to you! I have never seen anyone do this before! Your guest will love the personal touch. I was going to do disposable cameras at my wedding but I decided it was too expensive. Instead I made a scavenger hunt for people to use with their digital cameras. I saw this article to get people to upload their digital pics: http://www.geeksugar.com/3068420

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  4. WOW these look so great after being re-covered! WONDERFUL JOB!

    I'd be afraid people would take them though... we used to do that at Bat and Bar Mitzvah's when they left out cameras for us to use and leave.

    -kjpugs

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  5. Wow you are so crafty!! I love this idea. Great job on it! :)

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  6. Wow wow and WOW! What a great job you did! I would have never thought of this! They look awesome! I love the idea!

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  7. You are ridiculously talented Morgan!!

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  8. I'm so glad I'm following you....you are so crafty! Genius!

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  9. Why don't you start your own business a la Martha Stewart? You are crazy talented and crafty and knowledgeable about this stuff! I was going to suggest you do as the commenter above suggested and have a little scavenger hunt of pics for them to take with their cameras. This way you can try to avoid the boring stupid shots that most people get with disposable cameras at a wedding. It's not something I personally want to do. I plan on trusting my 20 something friends to post enough pics to facebook for me to steal them all away after the big day :)

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  10. !!! You are amazing!! Those look so great & you always give us such great directions & pictures!!! Thanks soooo much!

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  11. Awesome! Any way you would sell the template? I don't have time (or the motivation) for all the steps in illustrator!

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