Easy DIY Tepee

Hi all! This is Annika from Annika Olsson Photography stopping by to share this super easy DIY with you. I have for a long time wanted to build a tepee, to keep as a prop for my photography studio and I thought it would be a great project to share here on Simple as That. I know there are a lot of moms out there, who loves taking photos of your kids and this project is perfect for you. I especially think it is a great prop for the warmer months, where you can be outdoors.

You can buy a lot of cool tepees, premade with fitted fabric and everything, but I wanted to be able to easily change the fabric, and create different moods for different seasons and creative shoots.

This project also appeals to my thrift store collection of fabric, curtains, vintage lace, crocheted table cloths and knitted blankets. You can pretty much use anything you have laying around, by just being creative. I bet you can find all the pillows and fabric you need in your home, by following some of the tips I give you later in the post, but first we need to build the base of the tepee. Follow the instructions below:

Now that we have made the base for the tepee, let’s talk about how to create different moods, with different fabrics and blankets. I have lots of fabric in my craft room, but I picked out a couple of different things, to show that you can use pretty much anything, if you get creative.

I will go through the different pieces I picked out for my tepee set-ups. I have marked them out in the photo below:

1. Piece of pink velvet fabric (1.6 x 2 meters). I bought it at some point to make a big teddy bear 🙂
2. Two pieces of see through curtains. They are only about 60 cm wide. Found at a thrift store.
3. Random pillow.
4. Four pieces of pink lace-ish fabric (1×1 meter) I originally used these as table cloths on round tables for a party.
5. Small brown sheepskin rug.
6. A stretchy, tanned piece of fabric, with a lace look.
7. Small beige crocheted blanket (80cm x 120cm). Thrift store find.
8. White crocheted round table cloth. It measures about 1.8 meters in diameter and is one of my favorite thrift stores find.

So there is a lot of variety to what I have used, also in terms of sizes. A good thing to have handy, are bulldog clips. They will help you secure your fabric.

A thing to keep in mind, when photographing, is that the back of whatever you photograph won’t show in you photos. So don’t bother making things perfect, if it doesn’t show up in your photos anyway.

I don’t have huge piles of pillows in my home and especially not something that was made to go with this. So I thought I would make/fake my own. Usually, if I need a new pillow, I could sew or buy one, but it would be too much to trouble to go through, or get rather expensive, every time you want to do a creative shoot with your kids.

So here is what you can do:

1. Take a piece of fabric or blanket and lay a pillow on top of it, as shown in picture 1 above.
2. Fold in the sides and secure it with bulldog clips like in image 2.
3. Place your newly “faked” pillow in the tepee, and you are good to go as in image 3.

So as you can tell from what I have written and showed you, there are no rules, to what to use. You can pretty much drape and cover your tepee with anything and it doesn’t have to cost you a whole lot. It is only your creativity that will set the limit.

Below you can see the variety you can obtain in just changing the fabric and where you place your tepee. I didn’t have any kids handy, when photographing this tutorial, so my dogs had to pose as models. I think they did a pretty good job, thou 🙂

My husband also thought he would be an indispensable addition to the tepee 😉

If you are on vacation and want to make something similar, but don’t have access to wood rods, you could find some thick branches and use them instead of the rods. I think a tepee like this would be fun and cute for a photo shoot on the beach e.g. It would also serve as shade and a sun protector for your kids.

I hope you enjoyed this little project. Have a great summer!

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Annika Olsson

Annika is the owner of ByAnnika, a design studio, that creates hand lettered inspirational art for the nursery and kids room. She has a love for vintage typography, retro patterns, and pastel colors. On her blog she shares her creative projects, that are influenced by her home and life in the country.