Wood Photo Backdrops

When I attended the Six Sisters Build Your Blog Conference, they gave away lots of prizes.  One of them was a wood photo backdrop.  I didn't get a good look at it, but from what I could see, I thought it looked simple enough to make my own.  In fact, I was able to make three wood backdrops and I made them for FREE!  It helps when you can get the wood for free.  I used the wood from two pallets and I already had all the other materials which included:

drill and wood screws or hammer and nails

jig saw

sander

stain

paint

I started with two pallets and took them apart.  That's a lot harder than it sounds.  Taking apart a pallet is hard work and I was happy to have Pin Junkie Jr. helping me.  Between the two of us, we were able to take them both apart in an afternoon and had a nice stack of some decent wood pieces to work with.

A lot of the wood ended up in the trash, just because the wood split when we tried to take it apart, but we still ended up with enough wood to make three photo backdrops.  After we took the pallets apart, my helper cut the boards in half with a jig saw.  I wasn't too concerned about doing this perfectly for this project, but he did a good job making nice clean cuts.

The boards were about 40 inches long, so we cut them in half and fit six boards together for each backdrop.  That made each backdrop about 20 inches by 25 inches which I figured was big enough to photograph small things.  I didn't want to make them too big because they'd be difficult to pick up and move as well as to store.

Then it was time to sand each piece.  Again, I wasn't worried about making it perfect, but I did want to sand the pieces so I wouldn't get splinters every time I tried to pick up the finished piece to move it.  I also wanted to have a somewhat smooth surface for the stain and paint I new I would be adding next.

After each piece was sanded, I stained the wood for all three backdrops.

When the stain was dry, I pre-dilled holes and used wood screws
to attach the top boards to a base.

For the base I just used two pieces of wood, one on each side.
 Here's a top view.

Here's what it looks like on the bottom.

If you didn't want to use a drill, you can always use a hammer and some nails.  For the last backdrop, the wood I used for the base wasn't as thick and I was worried that screws would cause it to split.  Nails worked just fine.

Here's a top view of a finished backdrop.

And here's what it looks like from the bottom.

Once I had three completed backdrops, I wanted to give each one a different finish.  I kept one with a dark stain.  This one got two coats of stain, but the other two backdrops only got one coat. It's a little shiny because the second coat of stain is still wet in these pictures, but you get the idea. 

For the second backdrop, I painted a thin layer of blue latex paint over the stained wood.  After the paint dried, I lightly sanded some of the paint away.  I added a very thin layer of stain after sanding to give the paint even more of an aged look.

For the last backdrop, I tried the technique from this pin to get a crackle finish.  I wasn't sure it would work, so I did a test on a scrap piece of wood first.  Just brush on a layer of white school glue.  Let the glue dry about 10 minutes.  The glue should be tacky and not completely dry.  Then brush on a thin layer of paint.  (I used latex paint.)  I found that it works best if you don't  brush over the glue too many times with the paint.  I didn't worry about getting a perfect layer of paint either.  It won't look right at first, but as the paint dries it will have a perfect crackle finish!

The nice thing about this project is there's absolutely no pressure to get anything perfect!  The wood and the finishes are supposed to look old and rustic, so perfection is actually a bad thing here.  All those little imperfections will add character to the background which will add interest to your photos!  I'm really happy with the way these backdrops turned out and I'm really looking forward to using them to take pictures of my latest projects!

Visit the project gallery for more simple wood projects like this one!