How to do a DIY Cake Smash Photoshoot at home

DIY Cake Smash Photo Shoot

Your baby is growing fast… too fast! Sadly, you can’t stop time from moving forward, but you can capture the moment in a photo to cherish for years to come! To get these photos, you could go to a professional photographer in a studio who would assist in the backdrop set up, photography, and photo editing, however these photo sessions can cost hundreds of dollars! What if I told you that you can capture studio quality photos of your baby from home? You can! A DIY smash cake photoshoot is an adorable way to celebrate your baby’s first birthday or other milestones. 

I’ll tell you how I managed to completely DIY my son’s First Birthday Smash Cake photos all at home!

Planning your DIY Cake Smash Photoshoot

Pick a theme!

When you’re in the planning stage, think about what theme you want for your photoshoot so you can plan for the supplies and decorations you will need. Some ideas might be…

• Pastel rainbows

• White background with a hanging leafy greenery garland

• “Wild One” Safari

• “First Trip around the Sun” galaxy 

For baby D’s cake smash photoshoot, we chose “Time Flies when you’re turning One” as our theme, because we love airplanes!

The Smash Cake 

You can’t have a smash cake session without cake right? You can order a cake from a bakery if you want it professionally done, or you can attempt to make one yourself.

I’m not a strong baker, but I wanted to save some money by making my own cake using boxed cake mix and a sheet pan! Due to my lack of baking experience, It ended up having a more home-made look, but I am still happy with how it turned out! Remember, it’s probably going to be instantly destroyed during the photoshoot anyways, so keep the focus on your little one!

Here are the results! 

Gather your Photo Set Up Supplies

Here is a checklist for all the supplies you will need:

• A backdrop. Photo Backdrop, table cloth, or sheet
• A rack to hold up a backdrop, or painters tape to adhere it to the wall.
• Hanging décor such as a banner or sign
• Balloons
• Props
• Cake with serving tray and festive topper
• Outfit for your little one. 
• Camera 

Let me go into a bit more detail about what I used in our shoot

Backdrop

To make the background look seamless for the photos, you’ll want to put up something to cover the wall in the photos. 

Option 1: You could order a dedicated photo backdrop such as this one.  

Option 2: White table cloths! Best of all, you can find them at the Dollar Tree! 

This is the option we chose. I bought 4 packs of the disposable white table cloths from Dollar tree. I taped two on the wall layered on top of each other (I doubled up since they are slightly transparent) and taped two more to the floor to protect our carpet from cake and frosting!

Party Decorations:

To make the photos more festive, consider taping up party decor such as balloons, banners, streamers, or a balloon arch.

For our “Time Flies” Airplane theme, I just ordered a party decor pack from Amazon that had everything I needed and more. 

Outfit

You want your baby to be dressed to impress right?

for my son I chose this adorable suspender & bloomer set from amazon. The set included a little bowtie, but unfortunately it kept getting twisted off center, so I decided halfway through to remove it. 

Here are some more birthday outfit ideas!

Camera

Use the camera with the highest quality of photos. 

For my shoot I used my Nikon, [link] but if you don’t own a camera, don’t worry! Just use your cell phone camera. 

Step by Step DIY Cake Smash Set up

Now you’ve done all the prep, made the cake, gathered all the supplies… it’s time to put it into action. Here is how to set up your in home studio and make a beautiful setting for your DIY cake smash shoot!

1. Choose a location for the shoot. An open area with a lot of natural light works best! 
   
2. Tape the white material to the wall and floor. Be sure that the tape won’t be visible in the photos. Take a picture to test the frame of your photo.

3. Tape up the “Happy Birthday” banner and blow up festive balloons and place them around the floor. Again, take a few test photos to ensure you are getting the look you want. Keep in mind if you want your photos to be landscape or portrait and plan your backdrop accordingly.

*Tip: the banner should be places fairly low in the background to show all the text in the photo*

4. Make sure your little one is well rested and in a happy mood for the photos. Plan to take the photos first thing after they wake up so you have the best chance of them cooperating for the photoshoot!

5. Dress up your little one in their cute birthday outfit!

Photo time

After everything is set up, its time for the action! Here are the shots you should make sure to capture so you get the most out of your efforts:

1. Pictures of just the cake. If you want to document your cake before it’s destroyed, now is the time. Take a few photos of just your cake and the backdrop before you bring your little one over.

2. Pictures of just your baby before the cake. Set the cake in a safe place and take a few photos of your clean baby before giving them the cake.

3. Cake time! Bring the cake to your little one and see their reaction while snapping photos! Every baby will react differently so try to keep your expectations low. Some babies will go to town digging into cake. Others have little interest. 

If needed, encourage them to eat by letting them taste the frosting. If they still don’t want to, don’t worry. Just capture the moment and document your baby’s sweet personality and celebrate their milestone! That’s what it’s all about

4. Congratulate yourself on a job well done, and enjoy some cake (If there is any still left standing!)

Editing

To really elevate your photos to professional quality, you’ll want to edit them. I edited mine in Adobe Photoshop, but there are also free editing sites and phone apps out there that can do the job.

Here are my key tips for editing:

• Select only the best photos
  • I know you love ALL the photos of your adorable birthday star, but editing can take A LOT of time, so narrowing down your selections is key.  Go through your photos first and choose the absolute best ones.
  • To put things into perspective, let’s say you spend 6 minutes editing each photo. 10 photos would take about one hour and 30 photos will take at least 3 hours!

• Crop.
  1. Use the cropping tool to frame the photo how you would like. Make sure there is nothing in the frame that you don’t want there such as the tape that is holding up the backdrop

• Edit the background. 
  • The table cloths I used for my backdrop had slight crease lines, so I used the photoshop healing brush tool to edit out the folds to make a uniform background.
• Edit lighting. 
  • If you followed my advice and found a location with a lot of natural light, a lot of the work is already done for you! I just had to brighten my photos a bit more to get the look I wanted. 
• Sharpen the eyes. Using the sharpening tool, I brushed over my babies eyes to make them look a little more clear in the photo. It helps their eyes “pop” and takes your photos to a higher level.

Show off your ADORABLE DIY Cake Smash photos

You did it! You created your own DIY Cake Smash photo shoot from start to finish, so give yourself a pat on the back. It’s so special to capture this moment in time when your baby is transitioning into toddlerhood. 

Now it’s time to share your amazing photos with family and friends. Be sure to get some developed and framed too so you can cherish the memory for years to come!

If you did a DIY cake smash, let me know in the comments how it turned out. I’d love to hear from you!

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