Project Backdrop

 Advanced Cobbled Trash (tm).

I mentioned to Miss Moon that I had a super simple photo backdrop, and that wasn't a lie. It's just been some interesting times here for the past month. 

I'd tried making a photo box out of an old banker's cardboard box and some tracing paper years ago, and that worked...okay.  Later I attempted paper-mache'ing it and adding some reinforcement in the form of actual hinges since it had been getting pretty beaten up in various moves. It doesn't get a ton of use just because of its size. 

Moving into the new place opened up some spacious options, though. I have a kitchen island I use for a workspace, and wanted a backdrop stand to fit it.  Unfortunately, I have no idea what the technical terms for the parts that make those things are, and I didn't want to buy one prefab off Amazon.  They're a little pricey there. I might cave eventually if I need a larger one, though.

The basic construction is simple; I mean, all it is is a T shape with some clips and a counterweighted base of some sort. Bonus points if you can make it adjustable or telescoping somehow (I didn't lol).

The clip I've had for years. It's from that one time Sephora was junking a bunch of their display hardware. There are a few other attachment pieces hanging around, I have another one I use to hold a work light.

The main body of the T is a fortuitous find I made while staring blankly at the poster frames at Walmart. It's actually a piece of packing material from a case of lampshades. I was delighted to find some kindly stocker had left it on the shelf and nobody noticed it.  The extra black piece at the top is from the center of a roll of cheap pooper-scooper bags. Nowadays I get the recycled ones because they come in lavender and those have cardboard tubes, which would probably work just as well.

I took a dowel rod and ran it between those two plastic tubes, then filled that with hot glue to keep them together.

The double ended poster clips I found at Office Depot, I think. Big ups to the employee who tried to understand what I was asking for. If memory serves they come in a bag of about 10-12 for around $10.  I just took the clip off one end of one of them and hot glued that into the end of the upright. The rest should be pretty evident from the photo. 

The Sephora clip holds the foot of the lamp packaging down to the countertop pretty nicely. I should find a better way one of these days since it gets wobbly if I have something heavy hanging on it, but for now it works.

Enjoy the fridge-front clutter.  The stand is about 15" high? I never actually measured it, but you can capture an entire Barbie with the right framing without seeing the edges. 

Ideally I'd probably want a curved piece of posterboard, but this folded one is what I had on hand and it also does fine. The double jointing on the clips lets me raise and lower the backdrop if I want.

You can get some good basic shots with it, and it won't destroy the budget. The backdrop in this case is a piece of printed felt from the craft store =p