I also have Photoshop Elements and just haven't spent much time with it. I'll need to try that affect. Thanks!!

i'm not referring to shiny wrapping paper (obviously that would refelect poorly in a pic)...that's why i specified that it was a matte finish. craft paper works just as good...just wanted to give another suggestion since most people have a walmart within a few miles!

great post! ive tried using foam core board and for some reason it made my cake pic small and lost in the picture. you can see in my pics when i used black foam core the cake was lost!?! never understood why.
think im gonna give the fabric thing a try.
does anyone recommend a color?

UpAt2am -- the wrapping paper I used was unfortunately shinng. I'm going to give matte wrapping paper a try since you can get some many nice designs. Thanks!

A long time ago there was a thread on photographing cookies and I don't remember who had this idea, but I used it and now it's a staple for me: You take scrapbooking paper (comes in a wide variety of prints) and go to the quilting section of JoAnns where they have this plastic sheeting stuff in a matte finish (I don't know what it's called or what it's used for but it was there) and put the paper down on a surface, place the matte sheet on top and put the cookies on top of that. I did that for my "steppin out on the town" dress cookies (in my pix) and it really worked well. Now granted that's a smaller application, for cookies and I'm not sure how you could adapt it for a large cake background, but who knows, there's some very creative people out there!

interesting idea, bwb. I wonder if this would work using wrapping paper and one of those clear plastic mats you put under your office chair to help it roll around (the ones without the cleats.) They come in all kinds of textures, some of them more matte than others. You could tape the paper to show through them, prop it up, place it under, cut it to make a box, change the paper in a snap...

It might but those mats for office chairs are really thick by comparison to the quilting mats. The quilting mats are quite flimsy and flexible and can be easily seen through. The chair mats are designed not to break when a heavy chair and heavier body is on top of them, the quilting mats wouldn't survive that.

Good ideas! I too, am tired on ironing-at times I barely have time to get the cake boxed & delivered on time!