Valentine’s Day Curled Paper backdrop with Photoshop AI!

If you know me, you know I love a cute kid’s holiday mini session. This year I found Lauren Samuels’ beautiful Valentine’s photo shoot set up and needed to recreate it. I didn’t do it so well this year, but when I get my studio, I’m so excited to create even better set ups!!!

Edited in Adobe Lightroom and added artificial intelligence in Adobe Photoshop

Whether it’s changing the colors or adding in elements you don’t physically have in person, all parts combined = a fun and beautiful Valentine’s day photoshoot!!!

Without proper lighting or a white wall we had to make a hodge podge set up to hang the white paper backdrop behind this pink paper. I cut out a heart then made large slits and curled the paper backward. Just like Lauren shared, I taped the paper back to the backdrop. My kids loved playing around the paper and I almost had a heart attack after seeing the set up almost get torn. I decided I would not offer this officially to clients, but open it up to some close friends this year.

Photoshop Artificial intelligence “love” balloon

To make this Heart photoshoot perfect for Valentine’s day, it is a must to dress the kids up in Valentine themed colors, hearts and anything revolving around x’s and o’s to make the photos themed! I found these boys their shirts from Target. I bought Stella her heart dress from H&M the previous year. Both places have great prices and the cutest clothing for kids… and adults! Every season both of these stores have holiday themed accessories. I added in some heart hair clips for my daughter Stella and considered buying other heart themed items like lollipops or heart sunglasses, but decided to keep it simple this year!

Other ways you can make this session even more themed would be to

• Add in heart and “love” letter balloons

• Add confetti on the floor

• Have props - like sunglasses or kissing lips

• Stuffed animals

• Box of chocolates

• Add in siblings or best friends

This set up would look best if you have an area in your home where you can have a lot of natural light behind the camera! Within our home we have great natural light, but not enough wall space to take the best images. I would have liked to use our garage space, but that wasn’t an option since we have some items in there we haven’t been able to donate/sell yet.

This year we are having some friend’s over for a Valentine’s day small party and we’ll have this back drop for friend’s and their families to have their own little photoshoot. It always makes it more fun when there’s a cute place to take photos at a party. Last year I did a baby milk bath with roses and a mirror with “xoxo” on it. That was cute and I can never get my little toddler to be a baby again so I am so happy we do photos every year. Here is that blog link. In our home we also installed picture frame wall molding and I was so excited to take photos in front of that wall. I wanted to have hanging roses and that turned out as a fail because the stems were so heavy so the roses slid off of the fish wire string we had. I asked my friends to help set that up with me and it didn’t turn out to be the best so in the future I’ll know what to do differently and hopefully be able to hang roses from the ceiling individually rather than string too many and drape that string on the wall!

Also, another tip, when hosting a get together, plan ahead and prepare everything the day before. I was in my extra healthy eating phase and decided to make homemade pizza dough which took forever since I tripled the batches and my friends ended up making the pizzas while I took photos. This year, I’ll just order pizza and keep it simple hahah. Too much DIY in one day is hard with young kids!

My friends and I struggling to set up last year’s Valentine’s Day photoshoot.

The previous year I did a milk bath with rose petals in the actual bath tub. That was so much fun! There are so many fun ideas out there to make this children’s mini session special and love themed. Here is the Milk bath blog for these two cute cousin girls. When I open my studio by spring I will offer milk bath sessions. So excited for that!!!

Follow me on Instgram and watch my Reel from this photoshoot!

This past weekend my friends and I had an early Valentine’s day party including mini photoshoots. I selected a few photos from our sessions to include here from this year. Again, so looking forward to having designated space for this kind of session in the future!