How to Make a Surf Shack Photo Booth

If I have to replace a washing machine, you can bet that I'm going to want to keep the box it came in. And I didn't just use the box...the other parts of the packing ended up making a roof for a tiki bar or surf shop for a beach themed party. Other than hot glue and paint, the only thing I needed was part of a grass skirt .

first step (after cutting out one side of the box, was painting the box a medium brown...it was actually almost the same color as the cardboard, but I needed to cover all of the words. Then I took a darker brown to make bamboo marks. This is done by pressing down on the brush to make a wide, horizontal mark, before slightly lifting it and lightly dragging it down before making another pause and pressing to make another horizontal end of the vertical line. Leave a little gap between the next segment in the bamboo under that.....and they thought I'd never use what I learned in that .5 credit Chinese Calligraphy class I took in college!  After it was all dry, I went back over with a light yellow, dry brushing, and letting enough of the brown show through to create some highlights and shadows.

For the roof I did have to smooth it out with by hot-gluing a couple pieces to the top of a piece of packing that almost looked like a pyramid. You could just create a little roof shape with a small triangle at either end or even just a slanted roof going down towards the front. I did a little underpainting to fill in some of the thatching on the roof. Then I took some double sided tape, pealing off one side and stuck to the bottom of a grass table-skirt, about 4-6 inches from the bottom. I cut the grass just above the tape before pealing off the other side of the tape and tacking it to the bottom of the roof. Then I continued the process, trimming the grass skirt from the bottom and taping it above the last layer, until the roof was covered. There were bald spots, but there were also lots of bits of grass that could be used to fill in with a little glue.

I had to lie the box on it's side to hot glue the poles on the inside and then stand it up to glue the roof to the poles. I used big gorilla glue sticks and it worked really well.

If I had made the roof a little higher, I would have hung a shingle, but I wanted to make sure the thatched roof was in the photos so it was already a low 6 foot ceiling. I just put the sign in front of the window. It was a fun project and I'm happy to have another photo op for luau themed prom goers this year.