Try This: Oversized Photo Booth Prints (for under $10!)

Why is it that everything gets a million times cooler when it's either giant or tiny? I don't know what it is, but there's something about a dramatic change of scale that makes me love the item that much more (like our tiny photo magnets or these tiny photo books). I was getting a little tired of the printed scarf I had hanging above the Wurlitzer in our living room, and I thought it would be the perfect spot for a fun oversized photo. Rather than just print a regular photo, I wanted to use one of my favorite photo booth pictures of Todd and me that we took with the Party Party app this summer. I love the photo booth aspect of the picture because it gives you four photos to display instead of just one, and the photos feel much more candid and silly.

To get the best quality blueprint, take your photos in the Party Party app, save the image on your phone, and transfer the picture to a computer with Photoshop. Open the picture in Photoshop and go to "Image" and then "Image Size." Your photo should be at 72 dpi, but we are going to slowly increase the resolution to 300 dpi so you'll get a clearer print when you print it much bigger. You'll want to change your image resolution by slow increments of 10% at a time. So if you start at 72 dpi, you'll want to change it to 79, click "OK," then change to 87, click "OK," then 95, click "OK," then 104, etc., until you reach 300 dpi. Once you have the correct photo resolution, you can resize the dimensions of the photo to its final size (most blueprints will print up to 36" wide, so that's what I sized mine to). Save the photo on a flash drive and take it to Staples or Kinkos to have it printed. Mine is basically the largest square you can print, and it cost me under $9!

If you don't have access to Photoshop, that's okay too! Before I knew about the steps above I would just print mine without that step, and I was happy enough with the print quality. A bit of pixelation is part of the blueprint charm, but if there's too much distortion to your liking, you can always just print it a little smaller instead.

I've put up a lot of my blueprint prints with either just nails or tacks, and while I like the casual feel of that hanging method, I mounted this picture to foam core and painted a simple frame neon yellow for this special print. How cute would it be to do a series of giant, long, photo booth strips next to each other across a wall? Uh, oh! Looks like I'll be making a few more of these! xo. Laura

Credits // Author and Photography: Laura Gummerman. Photos edited with Stella from A Beautiful Mess actions.