My DIY Oliphant Backdrop :-)

As many other little inventions, this backdrop is the result of a mistake.

I was going to paint my styrofoam board peanut shell color, but without knowing what peanut shells look like in Australia, I bought quite bright yellow paint at Walmart that later I was proudly calling “Gold” to cover my error with some good sounding word.
I shot a couple of my clients using it, and honestly I didn’t like it and got tired of it pretty soon.

At the same time, my husband made another small mistake too. While fighting with weeds in our yard, he bought a roll of semi translucent drop cloth with a beautiful texture from Lowe’s instead of the heavy black drop cloth that he used to buy in the past. The piece was too big and quite a big cut was left on the roll after he finished.

Two failures combined, as well as my obsession to use up everything till the very last piece or drop, ended up as a little home photography project: my husband and I glued the drop cloth to the yellow painted surface of the styrofoam with Elmers glue, put it flat on the floor to dry overnight. We used plates as little weights and pinned the ends that didn’t stick with cloth pins. I used this backdrop the very next morning in the photo shoot.

You can try different colors that combine with gray of the cloth well, but my yellow, I think, looks very good with red clothes.

Thank you for your attention and please come again to learn more ideas you can use for your own home studio. I will keep you posted!