DIY Wooden Photo Backgrounds

I realised recently that I have lost all concept of how other people's brains work. I am certain that other people lie awake at night thinking about things like taxes, odd moles and their children.  I am not going to say that these things don't also worry me, but truth is, they aren't the worries that keep me awake at night - preferring to worry about those in daylight hours. My nights belong to such issues as "I don't have enough photo backdrops for the upcoming shoots". Yup, HOURS of lying awake wandering what I was going to use for some product and magazine shoots coming up, not to mention Capturing Childhood's upcoming Rocking Your Product Shots online course.

So, on her last day here, I dragged my mother to the various DIY shops in Stirling. I was going to get just a pack of tongue and groovy slatty things* as was detailed in just about every tutorial I could find on the subject at 4am as I scrolled through my phone in the dark. My mother, being supremely sensible pointed out that assembling said slats would be a pain, and flimsy and take time...so we quickly veered towards the ready assembled panel.  Its even called an EASIpanel - solid piece , reasonably sturdy and EASY - just what I like.

Its just MDF, but coupled with some pots of tester paint and left over Annie Sloan paint and wax I had lying around, it was seriously a 30 minute job to paint and age 2 panels.  Grand total cost £20 - it would have been cheaper if I had waited 15 minutes for a Homebase sale. (I specifically wanted something tongue and groove for the texture, but you could use a solid piece of wood as well)

Materials:

• Paint Brushes
• Easipanel from homebase (or anything similar - it measured 91x51cm)
• Paint (the turquise panel took 2 tester pots of paint - they happened to be 2 for 1 at Homebase)
• Wax or accent paint (I had Annie Sloan wax left over for ageing the panel, but it would have been just as easy to add a base coat of a darker colour then sand the overall colour back).
• Sandpaper

I painted the panels - giving them one solid coat and then touching them up after they were dry. 1 coat of clear wax and then a bit of dark wax added enough patina to give it all a bit of texture. If you didn't want to fork out for wax, a pot of different colour tester paint underneath the top colour and sanding it back would be a great alternative.

Let it dry and voila:

 

As much as I love fabric backgrounds, wood is great in particular for tutorials or shots you want essentially identical as it stays very stationary and you can mark it to ensure identical placement.

So, now I can sleep at night knowing I have enough backgrounds...(but then an aged wood one *would* be good as well) ;)

Rocking Your Product Shots starts 7th October.

*this may not be the technical term for them.