DIY Cheap Cake Photography Backgrounds

I’ve recently wanted to up my photography game for my cake photos. I see so many beautiful photos on Instagram from people with coherent Instagram pages full of matching colour schemes and I want my business Instagram to look as put together as those. This is how I came to make my own DIY cheap cake photography backgrounds.

I decided it was time to get some cake photography backgrounds to help give my photos a colour scheme and so people see a photo and know it’s from me immediately. There’s some great ready made cake photography background available from places such as the Cake Decorating Company but for the size I wanted they start at £24.99. I did a quick Google for DIY cheap cake photography backgrounds and nothing useful came up. So I had to get crafty and make my own.

First I found some coloured vinyl pieces on eBay. I bought these ones as they were only £5.99 and buy one get one free so I could have a go with a couple of different colours. They are 1m x 610mm which is the perfect size for me. They are more than wide enough for 8 inch cakes and 1m is long enough to drape it up the wall and over the table so the back and bottom of the photo is the same colour. I chose white as a neutral background and teal as that is the colour of my logo and I went for both in Matt. I would recommend Matt as even the Matt vinyl does reflect quite a bit of light. Gloss might seem like a good idea but it will reflect so much light that it will affect the way your photos turn out.

I take my cake photos on my hob because I have some pretty good LED lights on the extractor fan above it. At the moment I use sticky tape to attach the vinyl to the wall and then drape it down and over the hob. The sticky tape is strong enough to hold it in place because the vinyl is light weight. However I don’t want to be throwing sticky tape away every time I take photos so I am looking into different ways to attach it.

As you can see, above my hob are some hooks and my plan is to superglue a couple of loops of elastic onto each piece of vinyl and then I can just hook it over the hooks.

If you are attaching it to a wall you could consider using Velcro strips. You can get these online for quite cheap and you just stick one side of the Velcro onto the wall and one to the vinyl.

If you’re taking photos on a table with no wall or back to attach the vinyl to you could get a large piece of strong card to use as the back and use clips to clip the vinyl on. You could use an old cardboard box if you have one lying around. You would just need to use something behind the cardboard to prop it up.

Once you’re finished you can roll them back up and store them in the cardboard tube they came in to prevent creases.