Doll Craft - Making Saige's Easel

 SUPPLIES:

• 1 Mini easel with mini canvas set.  Our easel was made by Kids Kraft, but I have seen similar sets at Walmart and Michaels.  The easel I used was about 6 1/2" tall. 
• 3 Wooden dowels, cut to approximately 13".   Mine came in a 6 pack from the dollar store.  
• 6 Popsicle sticks 
• 2 wooden spoon style sticks or 2 cut popsicle sticks
• Clear packing tape

Begin by lining up the wooden dowel with the legs on the easel.  Use the clear packing tape to adhere the dowels to the easel. 

You can see that the dowels taped to the legs create an easel that is about 17" tall and the perfect height for the 18" American Girl Doll!  Feel free to stop at this point, as this would work perfect for the doll to paint at, or you can add a little tray to the bottom of the store bought easel to give the dolls a place to set their water cups and other art supplies.

The next step was to use hot glue to glue the two odd shaped sticks together.  I held them up to the easel, as seen above to determine the angle to glue the sticks at.  I did not attach them to the easel yet! I laid these onto a hard surface, and one at a time I hot-glued the 4 flat popsicle sticks on top of the V.  I then added the little ledge to the tray by turning the popsicle stick on it's edge. I used hot glue to attach the whole 'tray' to the lower legs of the easel, just under the canvas ledge as seen below.  Once this was in place I cut one more popsicle stick to fit between the legs of the easel.

 

Ivy LOVES the new easel and it looks SPECTACULAR in our art studio!  Previously we made the little paint pallet using a piece of white craft foam cut into the desired shape, and painted with little dabs of acrylic craft paint!  Tip- our water cups on the easel are made from various lids (the red one came from a glue stick!).