26.2.13

Cake Smash!

So for a while now i'd been looking into cake smashes. Its a great way to celebrate your childs first birthday and have stacks of fun! What child doesn't like to smash a cake up? (Well. clearly mine doesn't.) I decided that part of the ever growing photography business i would start advertising these. However i would have to actually have a go first! Oh hello nearly 1 baby girl. You'll do lovely.

I googled and pinterested (not a word.) tutorials and helpful tips and roped in my sister in law to make the cake. (she's awesome. and not only is the frosting fab, the CAKE is SO good.) I bought a load of stuff i thought would be cute and had a blast! We did a cake smash... smash being the operative word. HA.

I've put together a few helpful tips and a breakdown of how I did the set up as a few people had asked me about it. Hope its useful and helps you if you want to do one from home or are thinking of getting into the photography line of work!


This was my set up in the kitchen. As you can see, not much room! But you don't need a load of room to create a little set up like this. I did move my table which you can see in the bottom right of the picture so i had more room to move about. Didn't take long to set it all up, and its all very easy.

Pink paper - Amazon. Banquet roll for £10.90. 1.2m x 25m. It does have a slight pattern to it which i didn't realise when i bought it. I personally would've preferred it plain but you can't tell too much. I cut a big chunk off and sellotaped it to my pole station i use for backdrops.

Bunting - eBay for £3. It was sold by a private seller but you can get paper bunting soo cheap on the bay!

I then bought an off cut of skirting board from B&Q, it was £6.49 or something like that and its huge, doesn't really need to be this long but it works well if the backdrop is wider than i have used here. I just rested it against the pole feet and a box i had to hand.

The floor is my new purchase that i'm SO excited to use! A pack of laminate flooring which can be put together very easily! It packs away small (although a bit heavy) and it was about £24 which i personally think is great as i will get so much use out of it. You could always buy an offcut of wood flooring look lino if you were doing it from home. This works equally as well and also wipe clean! I made sure the pink paper was underneath the flooring, this made sure it didn't wave about and was pretty secure.

I did buy a sheet of plexiglass to use so i didn't damage my new flooring and also meant i could wash and clean up easily, but i really didn't like the reflection it gave.


If i had used the pink paper for the flooring too then i could've used it and easily cloned the reflection out but where i used the wooden  flooring it would've been a total pain to do that on every picture! And as it happens it wipes up absolutely fine off of the wooden flooring anyway.

I used my two studio lights which give off a real natural light and we also did it right next to my big patio doors. Although it was a miserable day, these still bring in a lot of natural light.

I set my 650D to f/4, ISO 200, and had the shutter speed on auto. I also over exposed just a notch.

And hey presto!



It also helps if you have a co operative child. Unlike mine... who decided she didn't like the cake and would much rather play with a car shouting neee naaarrr!!

Luckily Daddy was on hand to help me put her back on the set up every 5 minutes seconds. We had to prompt her A LOT to try and dive in, but i don't think you can tell too much from the pictures.





A few helpful tips
  • Just keep clicking. Click click click. It happens quite quickly, you can just delete the duff ones later on.
  • Have someone there to help, especially if you are taking the pictures yourself. No one likes a cakey camera....
  • Don't fret about the mess, thats the fun of it! Clearing up is super easy and doesn't take long at all, have everything ready so as soon as you are done you can crack on with the clean up.
  • Use a cake with frosting rather than roll out icing. They will get bored easily if they can't break it up in 5 seconds, roll out icing is much harder to dive into. Frosting also makes for more mess - which is the main aim!!
  • We cut out a bit of the cake so we could eat it later on without sticky slobbery finger marks, also meant she could see what was under the mass of pink lushness!
  • If all else fails... grab a spoon and dive in!!

The boys insisted they wanted to join in too, they had been patiently waiting and watching for ages, it was only fair....



I also highly recommend a tub bath afterwards! Gets them nice and clean and rid of stickyness and also makes another great photo opportunity. She much preferred this part of the session too!



And obviously the boys had to do this part too...



Hope i could help someone thinking of doing this too! We had such good fun, and i'm excited for the sessions booked in already!!

You can keep track of what i'm up to with the photography side of my life HERE.

5 comments:

  1. Oh my goodness! How cute. And your kids are adorable, really :) Especially the oldest boy, I just love his smile!
    Stopping by from Growing Home

    ReplyDelete
  2. I LOVE the addition of the bath tub at the end! I have not seen that before and that is super clever!

    Beautiful photos mama!

    ¤´¨)
    ¸.•*´
    (¸¤ Lanaya | xoxo
    www.raising-reagan.com

    ReplyDelete
  3. This is wonderful. I especially love the one of her foot covered in cake! Oh, how I wish I had a little photography studio!

    ReplyDelete
  4. This is amazing! I've been looking for ideas for my little girls DIY cake smash so thank you!
    Can I ask where you bought your sheet of plexiglass from?
    Thanks

    ReplyDelete
  5. This is awesome. can u pls let me know which lights u used?

    ReplyDelete

I love to hear from you, i read every comment and try and reply to them al! Thank you for taking the time to read :)

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