... and a DIY Light Box

One of our goals from our 6 month review was to improve our photos, especially the process shots. Something we find tricky is getting the lighting right and finding the best time of day and setting to get a good shot. With the evenings now getting darker *sigh* it's going to be even harder to catch the light.... So what better time to make our own light box!! We took our inspiration from this great tutorial by Flax and Twine.

PS. If you would like to read about our Homemade Lightbox that helps with tracing, drawing etc please click here. Otherwise please read on!!!

Materials

• Cardboard box
• Two anglepoise lamps
• White tissue paper or opaque plastic
• White thick paper
• Sticky tape and/or Staples
• Scissors

Start with a square-ish cardboard box. This should have been a simple task - but we found it surprisingly difficult to find a suitable box without paying lots of money....but thanks to Aldi we found some free ones in the end!

 Next cut a 'window' in each side of the box, so light can come through.

Choose a suitable material to cover your box. Many posts use white tissue paper - we used a disposable plastic tablecloth which had the same level of transparency but seems a lot sturdier (plus it was on sale for 29p!!). We cut it to size and used sticky tape and staples to attach it to the box. [There are two boxes in the photo as we made one each!!].

Finally add a large thick piece of paper inside to form both the base and background (having one piece means there's no seam or join line). Place your lamps either side and there you have your finished light box!

Ironically it was difficult to get a good, well lit photo of the whole light box so you can see how its all set up - especially as it had to be set up near a plug socket etc! But we had a play around with different photos and here is the same bottle taken with and without the light box. It definitely makes a difference!

Hopefully this will go some way to help us get better photos. If anyone has any other great tips or ideas, we'd love to hear from you!

We are linking up to these parties!