Artwork Storage Under the Easel

The Snickerdoodle has a basic art easel from Ikea that has a white board on one side and a chalkboard on the other. There's also a little tray for supplies and a bar to load a roll of paper onto. We have it permanently parked in the corner of the dining room so he can always draw a picture if the mood strikes. I noticed that as he grows older, he is acquiring more and more finished projects that he wants to keep and I can also trust him to have all-the-time access to more art supplies (beyond washable crayons) so I needed some extra storage for him. Here's my solution:

This project was super easy and only took a few minutes once I finally picked up the wood dowels at the craft store. Here's what you'll need:

• 2 wood dowels the width of your art easel
• 1 rectangle of medium to heavyweight fabric. I suggest twill, denim or duck.
• 8 inches of strong ribbon
• 4 small screws

Cut the ribbon into four 2-inch long pieces. Fold each one in half and screw into the legs of the easel like this:

Load the dowels onto the ribbons.

Using a flexible measuring tape, measure from one dowel down to just above the floor back up to the other dowel. Add 4 inches to this measurement. This is how long your rectangle of fabric will be.

Measure from the inside of one easel leg to the other and add 2 inches to this measurement. This is how wide your rectangle of fabric will be.

Cut your fabric using the measurements above.

Press in one inch on either side and either stitch those edges down or use stitch-witchery to hold them down.

Press down two inches on either end of the rectangle and stitch or use stitch-witchery.

Remove one end of a dowel from its ribbon and slide it through the top casing you just created. Now load the dowel back on and repeat with the other side. You should now have a sling to hold artwork, projects, supplies, etc.

This was a really simple project that added a lot of necessary storage space for the Snickerdoodle's art supplies. In our house, it also serves another purpose - it hides the cat door leading out to the cat's litter box in the garage. If you look back at the photos in this post, you can see a bit of the opening. Shhhh, it's our little secret.

Thank you for reading,
Julie


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