Thursday, July 29, 2010

My get-oh fabulous light box tutorial!

Hi friends and happy Thursday!
Okay, if you missed yesterday's post I said I was going to share something with you if you promised not to laugh. ;)
So today I am sharing my altered light box - it's a bit - uh - crude, but I just had to try it out.

First the story:
I was shopping online for a photo tent or light box to take pictures of my cards in, when I ran across a tutorial on how to make your own box for better picture taking. Being the frugal one that I am, I was sold on the idea! After all, it only required a nice size box, white thick pieces of paper, white material, and a lamp. I mean seriously, we all have that lying around, right? His original instructions (and for a larger box) can be found HERE, I tweaked it to fit the proportion of this particular box above.

The box should be large enough to place a card in.
The thick white paper is to line your box, the white material is to drape the openings (more on that in a bit) and the lamp is to illuminate from the top.

My Aha! moment:
My hubby brought home a box of Nabisco 100 calorie snack packs (26 count) for the kiddos' afternoon snacks. When I was emptying the box and putting the snacks away, I realized that the majority of the inside of this box is already lined in white - super cool! I have to admit, the box sat in my craft room for a few weeks until I finally decided to try this 10 minute project. {This caused a bit of frustration from the kids as they kept thinking it was still full of snacks.}

What you'll need:
A box
exacto knife or scissors
ruler
pencil
White paper (I used poster board)
white material

How to:
The process is so simple, you'll only go through one of those snack packs and your project will be done.
First measure an inch all around the front side, left side, and right side of the box:


Now with a sharp scissors or exacto, cut the "frame" out and discard.
At the top ONLY, cut off all the flaps of the box. (At this point it will kind of look like an open luminary.)
Take your white material and cover all the open areas: the top, and on each side. You can tuck the extra material to the back or cut it off completely.
The white paper is needed to cover the inside back and bottom of the box, this is the background and bottom of your card's picture. I used poster board since it was a bit thicker, and creased it right where it met at the bottom lining so it sat snuggly into the box.
Now place your light directly above the box so it is over the white material.

A little note: I have a very inexpensive camera that I use without a flash for my cards. I also use picasa (a free web download) to crop and watermark my pictures.

Now I wasn't sure how big of a difference it would make but here are two different pictures of my ACLP card from Tuesday:

BEFORE


AFTER


There's no yellow-ish tinge!
Here is a peek at my finished box (I usually have all the crude parts wrapped with my white material, but I moved it just to show you the 'frame work' of this project. And by the way you're not imagining things, my picture is a bit crooked - oops!):


See my little OTT lite sitting on top of a box? heehee! Eventually I would like to try this out on a bigger box, but for now this was a fun experiment. If you try it, let me know how it works! How cool is it that you can recycle a box and still get to enjoy some yummy snacks? ;)
Thank you so much for coming by everyone, I hope you liked this get-oh fabulous project! ♥

8 comments:

Jackie Randolph said...

Very clever and inspiring Joni!!! Need to go look for the perfect box, unfortuently with the all the kiddos around now, no snacks will be left for me I am sure! LOL!

Rhonda Miller said...

Joni, this is great. I'm going to have to try one of these.

Jennifer said...

Wow, Joni, what a great idea. I've been trying to get better pictures. I'm going to try this.

bernietom47 said...

Wow How neat is that!!! TFS Going to try this. My pictures are SOOO bad this has got to help.
Hugs & Blessings
Bernie

Crystal said...

Great job...... I bought a piece of foam board and made mine... very durable and one piece got a fairly large light box..... I set mine on the kitchen counter (close to the light source) and it works fine....without the fabric.

Anonymous said...

Just a quick note to let you know that a link to this post will be placed on CraftCrave today [30 Jul 12:00pm GMT]. Thanks, Maria

Unknown said...

He he he...I've been wanting to make one of these for at least a year! Hmmm...wonder how much longer I'll wait...

Leanne said...

Thanks for that tutorial! I would rather try to do this then go and buy one! Mahalo for sharing!!! Hugs!!