March 1, 2011

  • how to diy your very own photobooth

    The fury and fun around photobooths really took off around the time of our wedding in the summer of 2007. We had quite a few friends rent traditional photobooths or had their photographers creating their own version at their receptions for all of their guests. Ever since, I’ve been fascinated with the idea of simply creating one for use in our own home whenever we wanted. And with the first birthday of our daughter approaching, I finalized everything I needed for the task!

    Yep, that’s right, I DIY’d my own photobooth! Trust me, it’s really quite simple, and if you’re a super geek you might just have all of the parts lying around your house ready to go! And even if you don’t have spare parts, you can “borrow” your own components to use for your special day!

    Here’s what my home set-up consists of:

    20110227-IMG_5452_x

    Ingredients:

    • Canon A400 powershot (bought this one on eBay for $10) with all cords (you just need any compatible Canon Powershot camera)
    • Gorrilapod tripod ($20)
    • Old LCD monitor (from college computer)
    • mouse & keyboard (hidden from view)
    • Canon PIXMA mini260 photo printer (got this for $25 at Fry’s a couple years ago)
    • Old CPU – previous computer that’s been wiped clean
    • powerstrip (for all the fun plugs in the back)
    • Breeze Systems PSRemote software ($95)
    • Old sidetable (to house everything)

    20110227-IMG_5455

    So here’s the magic behind this lovely system. The software, PSRemote, made by Breeze Systems allows your computer to control your Canon Powershot camera (check here for the list of compatible cameras and Windows OS) remotely and you can easily set-up a photobooth in minutes! Just gather all of the ingredients, click what settings you want on the software, and you’re ready to go! (The Nikon version can be found here) Don’t have a Powershot camera? Don’t fret! They also make software for dSLRs (see the compatible list here) called DSLR RemotePro!

    STEPS to create your photobooth:

    1) Find a monitor, CPU, keyboard and mouse to use for your photobooth. Connect everything and install PSRemote.

    2) Design your custom photobooth screens! Take note of the dimensions of your screen, and create a series of JPGs in your graphics editing program for the following screens:

    ready.jpg – this is your “waiting for the next person” screen, so customize it with a friendly greeting and the instructions on what to do next!

    1.jpg, 2.jpg, 3.jpg, 4.jpg – These are your countdown images that go along with the “active countdown timer.” 1.jpg is displayed during the countdown before taking the first picture, 2.jpg is displayed before taking the second picture etc.

    taking.jpg – this is displayed a couple of seconds before taking each picture

    release.jpg – optional image displayed when the instruction to take the picture is sent to the camera approximately 1 second before the picture is actually taken. The live view on most cameras will freeze just before the camera takes the picture and this can confuse some users. To avoid this, the software will automatically hide the live view display if a release.jpg image is defined.

    processing.jpg – this is displayed after the last picture has been taken while the images are being prepared for printing. This screen could display a message like “All finished! Please collect your prints outside”.
    When the prints have been formatted and sent to the printer the ready.jpg image is displayed again.

    Upload these images to your photobooth computer.

    3) Find a place to position your camera. Connect the camera to the USB port on the computer and make sure it is in playback mode. Turn the camera on!

    4) Open up PSRemote and click on “File –> Photobooth Settings.” Go ahead and select all of the options that you’d like for your photobooth.

    I definitely suggest changing the Output to “print and save JPG” so that you keep a copy of all the individual images and prints on your computer. For help with additional layout suggestions, click here.

    5) TAKE YOUR FIRST PHOTOS! Check and adjust all the settings until you like the flow of everything!

    6) If you want a custom logo to be printed on your photos… here’s what you need to do! Select “save as JPG” from the Output options. Then, use that print example file as your template for designing your logo. Design it in your editing program, then erase everything but the logo! Save it as “background.jpg” and make sure PSRemote knows where to find it in the settings box. Now, when your photos print, they’ll have this wonderful logo on them as well!

    20110227-IMG_5458

    Now for our party set-up, I went ahead and customized all of the screens with special messages and also designed a logo for the printouts. All of this was done in about 30 minutes using Photoshop and made the experience that much better!

    Here’s a small video showing you the photobooth in action:

    And the end result?

    For any and all help in making PSRemote work to its best capacity, check out the full online manual. Have a blast with your DIY’d photobooth!

July 8, 2010

  • three years down the road

    Yesterday marked anniversary #3 for the Lemon family. THREE YEARS! I can hardly believe the time has passed by so quickly! Trust me, if you think your weddding planning period flies by in a flash, you’ll be utterly astounded when you start flying through the years and actually need to start looking up the appropriate gifting source for each occasion. And since I didn’t have any leather on hand for Mr. Lemon yesterday, I made him a virtual gift… our own Google Search Story:

    (p.s. you can make your own search story by going here!)

    If you happened to be uber bored one day and chanced upon my the Lemon archives here at Weddingbee, all of that would make perfect sense to you… except for that last line. You see, around the end of February a certain Baby Lemon literally popped into our lives and just threw our lives for a loop in the best of ways! Preparing for a baby is very similar to wedding planning… except unlike a wedding, the party doesn’t end. It keeps on going and going and going in truly the best of ways!

    I mean, look at that smile? That’s like a BIG piece of wedding cake for breakfast, lunch and dinner!

    Speaking of which… if you’re going to save the top of your wedding cake, I highly suggest you invest in one of those super-sucker vacuum air saver thingys and seal your cake up good. Why would I say such a thing? Because…

    … this is our three year old cake as of last night. Yup, we ate “aged” cake to celebrate due to a serious of misfortunes that led to us missing the chance to eat it on our 1st or 2nd anniversary. Heck, I was going to defrost it and eat it as “labor inducing cake” but my water broke early before I could try it out. Luckily we learned it didn’t induce any sort of stomach pains and that it smelled exactly like it did on July 7, 2007 (like sugar from heaven… trust me). And it tasted pretty darn wonderful as well!
    I told you life will just fly right by… I swear I put that thing in our freezer just yesterday!

    A special happy anniversary wish to all of my fellow marquee 07/07/07 brides out there… and a shout-out to anyone from “way back” in the Weddingbee days! Nice to see you all again!

June 3, 2010

  • yet another way for your guests to share their event photos online

    A few years back (years!!! boy does the time fly by!), I shared how I used my FLICKR account to gather photos from guests at our wedding. However, many people on Weddingbee expressed hesitations about handing out their account name and password, or running the risk of an evil guest “accidentally” deleting the album or getting confused about how to upload their photos. Back then, there were very few options for gathering and downloading full size photos from our guests, and this just happened to work extremely well for us.

    Fast forward to 2010 and I was asked to replicate my efforts on behalf of my MOH’s wedding this past May. While I knew exactly what to do with FLICKR, I decided to investigate and see if a “better way” had come along in three years. First, I started a “share site” with Shutterfly, but that idea only lasted a few minutes, as I learned that anyone who needed to upload photos had to join as a member. I know some people are comfortable with joining sites on a whim, but I also know plenty of others who will refuse to sign up for anything. So I went back to square one and came across the service I actually ended up using: irave.com.

    And why did I decide to go with irave.com over all of the other options?

    • I was the only one who needed to sign-up as a member of the site.
    • Guests could either email the photos or upload them directly to a website.
    • I could create a really simple web address for the photo album.
    • Downloading all of the photos cost $10. (as opposed to $25 for a FLICKR site) And if you happen to get bad photos, or no photos at all from guests… you don’t have to buy any download credits!

    So how easy is it to create an account? Really quite simple actually! Just sign up for an account with your information, verify the link you are sent via email, and then login to create your first album. You’re then given the email address and web address that you’ll be able to share with others. Just put those on a card… hand it out to your guests… and wait for the photos to come trickling in!

    But instead of simply telling you how easy it is to do, I figured I’d set-up a sample site that you can try out and see if this is the right choice for you and your guests. Here’s a photo of the cards that I created for my MOH Audrey’s wedding (but with my information subbed in):

    Go ahead and try it out! Email a photo to weddingbee@mrslemon.irave.com and see it pop up there… or go to the site (http://mrslemon.irave.com/Weddingbee) and try uploading a photo as well! And if it seems easy enough for your guests to handle… then maybe it’s the right option for collecting digital photos from your guests!

March 6, 2009

  • Broadcasting your wedding

    Have an ideal guest list that doesn’t fit your budget? Or perhaps you have too many family and friends that can’t travel to your wedding locale. What if you could invite them all to share in the magic as it happens… and broadcast it LIVE through the internet?

    I’ve seen the idea floating around the web for quite a long time, but today it became a reality when one of my favorite online personalities, Gwen Bell, announced the live-streaming of her nuptials tomorrow at 3pm MST. She’s using UStream to share her ceremony & reception with anyone who wants to join in on the happy event… and I’m sure you could easily translate the idea for your own event.

    What if you sent out a small postcard to everyone that declined an invitation with a link to your broadcast? Or sent and email far and wide to everyone you know only a day before the event just to spread the love? Heck, you could send out a tweet or update your facebook status and let everyone share in the love!

    While I’m sure some this idea might not be for everyone, if you’re one who’d love to have the world at your doorstep to share in your love, it might be the perfect solution! :)   Showcasing the wedding video months later just doesn’t quite have the same effect.

January 30, 2009

  • So you want to customize your bridal party?

    Way back in ancient times, when I was getting married, I thought it would be wonderful to have custom apparel for our bridal parties (yes… guys included). But there was one huge problem with this scenario: cost. Sure custom embroidery and screen printing looks great, but there was no way I had the funds or means to do something “extra” like that as a graduate student planning a wedding.

    In order to fulfill my desires, I went ahead an found a way to buy cheap shirts at wholesale prices and DIY my screenprinting, and 2 years later, people are still sporting around their t-shirts & tanks around town.

    (Details on the ROSE tank tops can be found here, and the TEAM t-shirts here)

    Recently, I stumbled into a couple other fun methods of making t-shirt designs: bleach & crayons! In case you’re interested, here are some more details on the process and the outcome:

    1) Bleach (via a Clorox Bleach Pen)

    First, I picked out a bold b/w graphic that I wanted to use: Sleeping Beauty’s Castle. But the problem was that my image was only big enough to fit on an 8×11″ sheet of paper… and I kind of wanted something a little bit bigger. In order to enlarge it quickly and easily (as opposed to chopping layers on photoshop), I used blockposters and quadrupled its size. I printed out the images on 4 pieces of vellum, and taped them together to recreate the image.

    Then I quickly cut out off the excess paper (still leaving a good sized border) and taped down marking areas for where I’d like the design on the shirt. I ended up inking the design in 3-passes  (top, bottom left & bottom right) so I made sure to put down good marks for where the pieces of paper needed to be laid back down.

    I used plastic sheets inside of the shirt to prevent any bleeding, but you can easily use magazines or cardboard as well.

    Then — I got to bleaching!  For this project, I used a Clorox bleach pen (sorry for the lack of photos of “in process crafting” — the bleach was making me tear up a little bit), which you can find in your laundry soap aisle. I flipped the design over and basically just traced the lines in bleach, then laid it back down on the shirt and pressed down the vellum.

    Here’s what the first pass (top half) looked like:

    I went ahead and did the same thing with all three sections, and then waited for the design to dry:

    I used a hair dryer to set the bleach (about 5 extra minutes of drying after  I had laid down the last piece), and then rinsed out the shirt underneath the shower. Once it was rung dry, I put it in the dryer for 30 minutes to set the design up.

    And in the end, I came out with this:

    Now while it might not be instantly recognizable as Sleeping Beauty’s Castle, I think it’s a pretty fun artistic interpretation of it… thanks to bleach bleeding, air bubbles and my desire to be a bit more detailed than I should have been with the design.  I was kind of operating off the cuff, since I’ve never seen anyone try and use a template to transfer the bleach. Next time around, I think I’ll invest in some stainless steel applicator tips (as recommended by Martha) to ensure more consistency with the bleech, maybe use a sheet of transparency paper instead of vellum, and leave the detail as an afterthought to fill in the design, rather than putting it on the template.

    #2: CRAYON!
    I had seen these fabric Crayola crayons in the sewing section previously, promising that you could iron any design you drew on paper onto fabric! Well, after reading some reviews online, it sounded pretty darn neat to me, so I decided to give it a whirl.

    For this project, I figured a plain ‘ol Mickey Mouse design would work well. I was hoping I could wear the shirt under a cardigan/open sweatshirt, so an easy center design was best as well. I printed out this Mickey design on vellum (probably not the best thing to use, but I was short on time as far as positioning was concerned), flipped it over.

    IMG_1140 by you.

    I traced the outline I wanted and then filled in the black parts with purple. Lots of crayon shavings went awry (probably due to the vellum), but I was still able to color quite heavily.

    IMG_1142 by you.

    After coloring, I flipped the design over again, and ironed it down on my shirt for about a minute on the cotton setting.

    IMG_1138 by you.

    When I peeled up the design, I ended up with this:

    IMG_1146 by you.

    It’s definitely a very light transfer of Mickey, but I think it works out great. Kind of like a sketched out piece of artwork… but not as obvious as a screen print. The down side of this shirt is that it’s not supposed to be “dried in a dryer” — and I’m not sure if I want to test out the warning to see if it’s true or not. It would be great on a tote bag or something else that wouldn’t be washed though!!!

    So hopefully you’ll get some creative ideas from these methods and be able to DIY yourself some fun wares for your VIPs. Oh… if you need those discount prices on shirts, try jiffyshirts.com or trendyblanks.com (for American Apparel).

August 18, 2008

  • A template for an easy way to dress up water

      Last year, when we were preparing our Out of Town bags for guests, we knew that water bottles would be an essential ingredient to include. Yet, since it’s me, there was no way the water was getting into people’s hands without some sort of fun intervention!

    We went to Costco and stocked up on 2 cases of water at the high price of $4.49 each. When I removed the label to measure it, I realized that the labels were exactly 8.5″ long… the same length as a standard piece of paper. As the lightbulb went off in my head, I ran to dip a piece of laser printed paper in water… and guess what… no bleeding! It was then that I realized I could save myself a lot of time if I made the labels out of PAPER instead of printing them onto costly and expensive label sheets!
    So, that’s what I did! I just removed all the labels, cut out the sheets into strips, and reattach using the sticky from the bottle (lots will be left on it) and 1 glue strip to fold the ends over!
    [Now, if your bottles were going to meet up with ice baths at sometime, I'm sure you'd still need to get waterproof label sheets to cover your bases. But, otherwise... this really is a super easy way to decorate bottles quickly!]

    While that was last year, I’ve used my templates to quickly and easily dress up the same bottles again for random occasions. People always ask where I ordered them from because the formatting is identical to the Costco bottles (ingredients, bottling info, etc.) except for the background and the custom label. So, I went back and scrubbed the templates clean, and have uploaded them for WeddingBee to customize at will!

    BLACK LETTER Water Bottle Labels: Adobe Illustrator Format (*.ai); PDF format

    WHITE LETTER Water Bottle Labels: Adobe Illustrator Format (*.ai); PDF format

    And just to show you their potential, a set I made with the white text using patterns by Sashiko:
    Adobe Illustrator File (*.ai); PDF File

    I hope you enjoy them! (p.s. if you don’t have Illustrator, remember that you can always use the opensource version, InkScape, for free!

August 13, 2008

  • The perfect rehearsal dinner needs aliens & sheep

     
    When I went to Roswell, NM to attend the wedding of my BM Meagan, the last thing I thought I’d be doing was eating gumbo on a Friday night. I thought we’d be hanging out with the aliens and chatting it up with the cowboys, so when I arrived for the rehearsal dinner, I was shocked to be suddenly transported to a southern plantation. It was, however, perfectly fitting for the groom’s celebration, since he is a Roswell-transplant via Louisiana.


    (The sheep watched us dine from beyond the fence)

    The tables were set-up on the front lawn of the estate, with the catering stations on the side. And, by catering, I mean home-cooked fixin’s that were provided by generous family friends.

    Each table was set immaculately with colorful napkins, candle holders, and of course, BBQ bibs.  Plus, Meagan got to use the gerber daisies that she loves so dearly… and that her florist outlawed at the wedding. ;)

    And you can’t forget the Louisiana hot sauce! One per table seemed to do the trick!

    Bibs on everyone…. time to chow down!

    And then there was the food!!! While my tastebuds couldn’t handle all of the spicy goodness the gumbo and shrimp had to offer, everyone at the table was “ooohing” and “awwwing” over it. I stuck to the hushpuppies and macaroni. And the mojitos. :)

    See… those bibs do come in handy!

    Desserts were, again, provided by family friends. The strawberries (soaked in Grand Marnier) were wonderful atop ice cream, along with the cookies and lemon bars.


    It turned out to be the perfect summer night, and the ideal way to get ready for the celebration on Saturday!


    The lucky couple even got the chance to sneak in some early dancing.

    In all, they pulled off the perfect welcome reception for their family and friends visiting from near and afar. I mean, they did have to go and top it with a fireworks display the next night… but regardless it was a flawless rehearsal celebration.

    Cheers of milk back to the happy couple of Meagan and Ian! (Seriously… how cute is this! Toasting with milk for the cake cutting? Adorable!)

July 7, 2008

  • Time Flies when you’re having Fun!

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    Mrs. Lemon: Has it really been a year since we’ve been married?!?
    Mr. Lemon: It seems so much longer than … wait, I mean, Happy Anniversary?!?

    So a whole year has passed since that lucky day last year, and it certainly seems like the year has flown by us quicker than I ever could have imagined! In a way, our wedding was really just the kickoff party for the rest of our lives. We got to share our love with those closest to us, but also invite them to share in the rest of our crazy adventures as we try to make the best out of everyday. Sometimes we come close… and other times we fail miserably… but the attempt has been the part of a journey I wouldn’t trade for the world.

    We decided to be quite daring and pack this year full of crazy things, such as:

    1) We hella moved from SoCal to NorCal

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    2) I chopped off my hair… to the lengths it was when our courtship began!

    IMG_0161

    and the current biggie….

    3) We bought our first home!


    Our new House!  The new key!

    As far as all of that wedding planning, well an archive of the goods can be found at my handy-dandy WIKI page here on Weddingbee. And my current/future adventures in life/crafts/good things can be found over at my personal blog: kimberlymichelle.com. There’s really no way the Bee family can shake me from the hive permanently, so I’ll be sure to keep everyone updated if I wander by an amazing wedding project… and continue to refer every living creature pondering marriage to this site. :)

    But for now… I’ll just pass on advice to all future brides wandering through here: ENJOY it all. Weddings were meant to be celebrations and parties, not sources of stress and anxiety. As long as you have the officient and a spot of Earth where you can join hands, you can be married and begin your adventure as well. Enjoy the days after where you giggle each time you call him your “husband” (or wife) and enjoy the nights you get to fall asleep to someone else’s breath. Enjoy your families and friends before and after the wedding, no matter how crazy and dysfunctional they may be. And enjoy each other.

    Happy Anniversary Mr. Lemon! I’ve told you many times that I’m the luckiest girl alive… but now I’m shouting it from the trees! I’ll never stop thanking you for clicking “send” and buying me a cookie.

June 10, 2008

June 9, 2008

  • wedding crashers

    On Saturday evening, Mr. Lemon and I found ourselves wandering amidst the foothills of Amador County, and just happened upon quite a celebration.


    People were dressed in quite the attire (check out the gorgeous girl in white!)…


    …there were wine glasses filled to the brim with the finest Chardonnay, and little teal accents all over the place…


    … some lucky ladies even got to carry around beautiful flowers!


    These folks obviously enjoy having animals either on their cakes…


    …or eating animals made of cake!  (I ate a piece of Joe’s shirt… because I really couldn’t bare to eat a piece of Joe!)

      
    And there seemed to be water everywhere you turned! The tears were flowing…


    …and streams of water poured through the honored couples hands.


    At the end of the night, there were tiki torches ablaze and revelry to be had amongst the vineyards and under the tent. (I had to edit the photos here… They were far too wild to be shown on weddingbee!)

    So without stealing the thunder from one of the most amazing girls I know, I had to say that the Penguin affair was an event not too be missed, and we can’t thank them enough for the honor of attending. The bride was beyond gorgeous in each outfit she adorned, and the groom was glowing all night (even before the cigars were lit). My photos don’t do justice to the magic (I know Sarah’s photos will be sickly amazing!)… but trust me there was lots of it!  And now Mr. and Mrs. Penguin get to enjoy wearing new rings, hearing new names and just loving married life!


    Your friendly wedding crashers signing off…
    Mr. & Mrs. Lemon (who is sporting the latest Bee-trend of lopping the locks)