Pin Up Party

 

 Pin curls, bright eyes, and pursed red lips,

Something to show off curvy hips,

Fishnet stockings, and sky-high heels,

Pin-up girls get all of the squeals!

This weekend the Cool Shots Photo Lounge gained some vintage appeal at Emily's Pin Up Party!  Emily is a close friend that will be getting married in June at Mathews Manor.  To celebrate, her friends and I threw her a lingerie shower with a Pinup Girl theme.  The Cool Shots Photo Lounge was the perfect fit for this photo-friendly theme!


A little history - Pinup photographs first emerged in the 40's and 50's into a society where women still did not have many rights, and certain expressions were not acceptable. It is a type of modeling where women pose in a sexy, playful manner and it was the first time lingerie was shown in the media.  Pinup photography brought sexuality into pop culture and brought around profession of high fashion modeling.  Today, pinups still represent female confidence and power.  They embody style and sophistication in their photographs.  That blend of playfulness but innocence really worked great to play up some fun with the photo booth!  The Cool Shots Photo Lounge was the perfect way for us to capture all the pinup poses!


Pinup's history with lingerie made it the perfect theme for a lingerie shower and we always love a good reason to dress up for an event! All of the hostesses wore dresses, hair styles, and make up from the era.  We also provided some other themed props, boas, and vintage items to pose with at the photobooth!  Each guest got to take their pictures home as a favor, along with a CD of burlesque music that was customized with labels that matched the invitation. 

The invitation, menu, and CD labels were created with help from the talented Amy B. at Cahaba Creative and we carried the same image from the invites throughout the party onto the photo prints, the cake, and also the CD labels to have a unifying theme.  The food table was decorated with vintage pinup images and a menu full of fun food that we themed with names such as Frisky Fingers with honey mustard and Fishnet Seafood Dip.  The delicious red velvet cake was from Crazy Lady Cakes in Helena and it got tons of compliments!  

Other than the Photo Lounge, we did have one other activity that we played while we opened gifts.  Before Emily opened each of her presents, we asked her a question that we had asked her fiancee to see if they shared the same answer.  There were questions about how they met, where they like to travel, and their favorite foods.  If she got the question right she got to open her gift, but any time she got a question wrong, she had to put on that outfit on top of what she was already wearing.  By the end of the night, Emily was layered in clothes and we all had learned a little more about the relationship and the love of her life!  Thanks to all of the hostesses for making this such a special event and to Emily for being a wonderful friend!  I will be sure to post another blog in June after their big day!

Ashley Bat Mitzvah

Feel the Beat Entertainment and the Cool Shots Photo Lounge travelled to Mississippi to celebrate with Ashley and her friends and family for her Bat Mitzvah weekend!  As you walked into the room, it was like you stepped over the rainbow into The Wizard of Oz!  All of the guests got to walk in on the yellow brick road, which ended at none other than a giant, sparkling Emerald City.  There was a variety of scenes from Dorothy's trip all around the room, and the movie played on a big screen throughout the night.  The delicious food was provided by the Embassy Suites Ridgeland and the cake was a towering ode to the land of the Munchkins.

DJ Justin kept everybody on the dancefloor all night with hits from Lady Gaga, Black-Eyed Peas, Train, and even a little old school "Tootsie Roll".  Ashley and her friends loved to dance and so did the Tin Man, Scarecrow, Cowardly Lion, and even Dorothy!  But every once in a while, we turned off the music to check in with Dorothy, although no one seemed to mind since it meant that everybody got a new party prop to dance around with!  Ashley's mom provided hundreds of cool items to make the party even more fun!  You would have thought that these guys had won the lottery with all of the stuff they got at this event!  If you could answer some trivia, you got a prize, if you won one of our games, you got a prize, if you were a 'single lady' you got a prize,  so pretty much everyone got lots of prizes! And once they were worn out from all the dancing there was still a caricature artist, and of course, the Cool Shots Photo Booth!  Thanks for letting us celebrate with you Ashley!

Join us for Girl's Night Out

Feel The Beat Entertainment along with the Cool Shots Photo Lounge will be participating in Girl's Night Out at the new Alfred Angelo Bridal Salon off of Highway 280 on April 15th from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.!  Click on the attached link to receive $20 off of each of your bridesmaid's dresses.  Also, the first 50 guests will receive free gift bags.  Come indulge in complimentary consultations, beauty services, and tasty treats while meeting with professional stylists and wedding experts!

Alfred Angelo Bridal

Date: April 15, 2010

Address: 3000 Cahaba Village Plaza

Birmingham, AL

Phone: (205) 970-6923

Cool Shots PhotoLounge heads to a Bar Mitzvah

Well, 2009 was a very cool year for the Cool Shots PhotoLounge and it's off to a great start in 2010 as well!  One of the first events of the year was a Bar Mitzvah for a really cool guy named Charlie.  Charlie and his family worked very hard on all the details and it showed!  The theme of the event was karate, since Charlie is a black belt, and the colors were black, red, & white.  They had a DJ for entertainment, the PhotoLounge, an airbrush artist, a sorbet & ice cart, yummy food including a candy rollup that looked like sushi, and then a "take-out" candy counter where the guests chose their favorite candies to take home and enjoy!  So many cute details are sure to make an event feel special and really show the time and effort that was put into the planning.  It was this attention to detail that inspired the next 'upgrade' for the Cool Shots PhotoLounge.

Now,  if you're not familiar with the "PhotoLounge" concept yet - I'll catch you up :)  We take the Photo Booth and create a lounge by surrounding it in drape and then add in a bench and lamp for a swanky effect.  Add in some silly props plus the happy party-goers and you have hours of entertainment!  Typically with an event with a guest of honor, like a birthday, bar/bat mitzvah, or a wedding, we also put together a scrapbook for them to keep.  The Photo Booth prints out two identical prints - one goes home with the guest as a keepsake and the other goes into the scrapbook.  Well, for this event, we had the help of a professional scrapbooker, Dina Glass with Close to My Heart Scrapbooks, and boy did she make a difference!  Her cool scrapbook pages were just another element of planning that really added some "Wow" factor to the final product!  Here is a picture of a couple of the finished pages (the kids got to add on the photostrips & stickers themselves).

The next week, I grabbed up some colored paper and a few scrapbooking supplies and tried to recreate the look myself!  It was much more challenging than I had expected but also a lot of fun.  It inspired me to pay more attention to this aspect of the PhotoLounge. Putting together the scrapbook at an event is just another cool activity to engage your guests.  It lets them be spontaneous and creative, while also giving them a chance to leave special messages to the guest(s) of honor.   I get chill bumps thinking about how twenty years from now, Charlie will find that scrapbook and look back through it, and have such a great record of everyone that was there and all of the fun they had.  To be able to be a part of someone's biggest life events like that is truly one of the greatest rewards of my job.  Thanks to Charlie & his family for having us out, and special thanks for letting me make a few choices from the candy counter :)  Also, here are a few of the scrapbook pages that I did -

Fright Night Expo- Mad Hatter Party

Last Thursday the Birmingham Convention and Visitor's Bureau teamed up with Go Pro to host the annual Fright Night Expo.  There was a Mad Hatter theme and Birmingham's top hotels showed up with their brightest and best!

We were excited to join the Tutwiler Hotel in their booth with our Cool Shots Photo Lounge.  For their booth, they went with a tea party - Mad Hatter style!  There were giant teacups and tiny cupcakes, bright pinks and oranges accented with teal,  and the cake by Culinard which was absolutely a masterpiece!

We wanted the Cool Shots Photo Lounge to match with the rest of the theme, so I went to work creating a psychedelic beaded curtain and some tea party necessities!  Here are some pics of the process with a few notes of how everything came together.

First,  I started with two different sizes of styrofoam balls for the beaded curtain and painted them in the bright colors of the booth.  With styrofoam, you have to be careful with your paint choice because some paints and glues will actually eat away the styrofoam.  I went with a basic acrylic craft paint, which also worked well on my teacups and saucers.  I just grabbed these at the local thrift store (REUSE!)  I also added a light coat of Mod Podge to seal in the paint and add a nice gloss.

I layed out the pieces of the curtain first to make sure that everything would work and added in some flower heads to add a little garden appeal to the tea party theme.  The flowers were a little droopy, so I also Mod Podged them to keep the petals nice and straight.   A little fishing line and some beads were used to create each string and space apart the items.  I used the remaining flowers in a silver teapot (also a thrift store find),  a cool glass bottle with 'Drink Me' tag, and some other items I found in the bright colors as the finishing touches.  

The Tutwiler created a cool framed 'looking glass' that the guests stepped through to enter the Photo Lounge.  It was such a great element to tie everything together!  I was really happy with how everything turned out and so was the rest of the crowd - The Tutwiler Hotel's booth was voted #1 for the event!  We couldn't have asked for it to turn out any better!

Thanks so much to the Tutwiler team for having us!

Green Tip of the Day: Use local, seasonal flowers

Did you know that there are 2.5 million weddings a year in the United States, with an average of more than 150 guests each.  When you add up all of the stuff that goes into weddings (single-use bleached white dresses, chemically treated imported flowers, toxic makeup and skin care products, mined gem-based jewelry, individual packets of rice, etc.) you see that the environmental impact from these events is enormous.


Going green for your wedding day may not be as difficult as you might think.  There are hundreds of things that you can do to cut down your wedding day's impact on the environment and every little bit helps!  


Today's tip is to talk to your florist about using local flowers.  Flowers that do not have to be transported long distances have less of an ecological impact and flowers that are in season during your wedding will already be a perfect match with the season of your event.  You can even take it a step further and re-purpose old teapots like the ones shown in the picture to use as centerpieces that will benefit not only the earth, but also your wallet!


For more green wedding tips, check out The Green Bride Guide at http://www.thegreenbrideguide.com/