A clever and inexpensive way to make your own Art Easels...

Problem: Art Easels help keep paint off your kids, the floor, and the table, but they have always been too expensive and bulky to purchase for a group of kids in an Art Workshop. 

Solution: Writing Team to the Rescue!  We searched the web and found some great ideas for making portable table-top easels out of cardboard.  

DIY TIPS: Fold and tape extra-heavy duty boxes into triangles and tape to the tabletop so they don't move. You can also tape a flat cardboard base to them so they stand on their own on top of the table. Add "S" hooks to them so you can store them "up" on hooks in your room or supply closet. 

This is the kind of problem-solving and creative resourcing we do for the Writing Team Lesson Sets. See the Team's lesson menu.

Three Great Reasons to Use an Easel for Painting Projects

1. When using an easel, kids tend to use less paint because using too much will cause it to run down the canvas. Less paint often results in higher quality artistic results too.

2. Painting on an easel means kids don't have to lean over a table to paint, and that keeps more paint on the canvas and less on their arms and smock.

3. Painting on an easel means smaller kids don't have to kneel on a chair to reach the top of their canvas. This means you can remove the chairs altogether which tend to get in the way and get paint on them. (We love art stools anyway. )

Photo credits: ArtBar, Cardboard Collective, and Children's Museum of NY. Non-artistic photographs of common objects cannot be copyrighted, but we appreciate their effort nonetheless in bringing this idea to everyone's attention.