DIY Social Media Photo Prop

My husband and I had a fairly simple, do-it-yourself wedding/reception. Sadly, when we got married (2010) there wasn't really a Pinterest to help us with ideas. If there had been, I suspect our wedding would have looked a bit different and incorporated a lot more decorations.

This instructable will show you how to create a snazzy social media frame prop with little to no monetary investment. We used all recycled/reclaimed and leftover materials to pull this prop together.

Some of the photos have names etc. blurred out to protect anonymity as we made it (in under 2 days) for a school dance.

Camera

-Projector of some sort (I used my classroom's ENO Board)

-Cardboard

-Wood strips

-Paint, primer (we used Gesso, acrylic craft paints, acrylic satin craft paints, and fabric paints)

-Glitter

-Glue (white glue)

-Ruler/Tape Measure

-Cutting tools

-Staple Gun & staples

I was able to snag a box some poster paper came in. I took off the flaps so that I had one piece of solid cardboard with no bends. The cardboard measures about 35" high and 25" in width.

I initially did a Google Images search for a Polaroid frame, but then I saw various Istagram and Facebook images and decided one of those would be more fun and let me use more colors. I ended up going with Istagram. I secured the cardboard to my ENO Board as best I could and used a pencil and ruler to measure out where the box for the photo would go, as well as where all the faux buttons etc belonged.

After cutting out the center photo box, I covered the frame with a layer of primer/Gesso and then a layer of white acrylic paint.

When the frame was dry, I put it back up on the ENO Board and started tracing.

I was initially going to paint the squares for the toolbar one at a time, but I ended up doing of the black at once. The only black paint I had in my classroom was black fabric paint, so thats what I used---very nice and shiny.

Then I used a satin blue I had lying around for the camera button and the top strip. But I apparently didn't take pictures.

After all my buttons and strips were painted, I started painting the icons---and then I quickly switched to free-handing white glue and pouring glitter on everything. Because glitter.

I traced everything I wanted glitter on with glue and then poured the glitter on and let it sit until it was dry enough.

I did the same thing with the top rows. I traced the "Instagram" in pencil and then covered in glue and glitter. I free hand wrote the name of the event in glue and covered in glitter.

I used some wood strips (about 2' long) from our Maintenance Dept. to help steady the frame as the sides bent basically in half very quickly into the process. They also let me borrow their heavy duty staple gun (not pictured) when mine (pictured) decided to break on me.

Slide the wood strips under the frame and position where you want them. I put several staples into each side to make sure it would hold.

Here is my husband posing with the frame before taking it to the dance.