Every time I scroll through my social feeds, I see so many gorgeous flat lay pics. I get so jealous seeing so many pictures with that beautiful driftwood background! But since my house is 90% carpeted (and the other 10% DEFINITELY isn’t picture worthy, lol), I thought a great background was not something I could do….until I did a little shopping at the dollar store and Amazon, that is!
I discovered that for just a few bucks, you can create your own faux flat lay background to really help your pictures pop! Here’s how:
Materials:
- Large piece of foam core board (I got mine at the dollar store)
- Contact paper of your choice (I got two different designs, one from Amazon and one from the dollar store.)
- Scissors/blade
- Plastic card to smooth out bubbles (optional, but it really helps)
The first thing to do is measure your piece of foam core. Add on an extra inch to each end for wrap around on the back side. Once you’ve measured, go ahead and cut a piece of your contact paper to this size. Lay your foam core face down on the back of the contact paper and cut out a notch at the corners. This makes it easier to fold these edges around the foam core for full coverage.
Next, wrap the edge of the contact paper to the back of the foam core and adhere it to the board before flipping over.
Carefully begin pulling the backing paper off a little at a time, using your plastic card (if you’re using one) to smooth the contact paper as you go. It’s important that you take your time and do just a little at a time. You don’t want any air bubbles in your finished background!
As you can see in the picture above, my board is slightly bigger than the width of my contact paper. If this is the case, you will need to cut a second strip to finish covering the board. Simply measure out a second strip and overlap the design, making sure to match it up as best you can. With this wood-look paper, matching it up was easy. The other paper I chose was not so easy to match up, but I did the best I could, and I’m still happy with the result.
And that’s it! It’s that’s simple! Hey, it may not be perfect, but it’s a lot better than the options I had before! And the size of the board is big enough for all sorts of projects!
