hi I'm Sophie and welcome to my world today I'm going to teach you how to turn
a cardboard box into an easy inexpensive art easel I recently had to make 38 of
these for a little art show that we were doing in Mexico and I was able to do
them in an hour I'm telling you they're easy they're cheap and they work great
so I'm gonna teach you how to make it right now for this project you'll need
the free downloadable template from my website find that in the link below or
go to www.sophie-world.com you'll need cardboard either a box or flat cardboard
you'll need a marker exacto knife a cutting surface and scissors so first
thing you want to do is you want to download my template from my website and
you're gonna want to cut it out with the scissors so I've already got it cut out
and ready to go here if you are making this with a box it's really super easy
what you want to do is take your box and remove your flaps so you want to cut
these flaps away so I'm just gonna take my work surface put it underneath here
I'm just going to follow along the line
cut that flap off and then do the same on this side cut this flap off
now what you can do is take your template and you actually you know have
it folded in half line that edge up with the edge of the box and make sure that
it goes right along the edge there then you're going to take the pen and just
trace now if you've got a good exacto knife you should be able to cut through
both sides at the same time this is one of the reasons I like these box cutters
more than like a regular exacto knife
because you can bring the blade out further and then just cut across the top
here when you pop it out it's already ready to go because it's already been
formed at that corner so there you go and you just stick your artwork right
down in there now here I'll show you just stick your artwork right there see
holds it perfectly now if you have flat cardboard it's just as easy you just
have one extra step so in this case I've got my flat cardboard one of the
things I want to do is I want to make sure that I am putting it with the grain
that when I line this up my template I'm lining it up with the grain of the
cardboard the way that the cardboard bends and I just line it up
of course it's best if you just do it at the edge line it up with the flat edge
trace around
and then cut this out with your exacto knife so that you end up with a piece
like this here's the step that you don't have to do with the box find your center
point and just take your exacto knife and very gently score the cardboard what
I mean by scoring is that you're making a gentle cut through that first layer of
paper but not through the entire cardboard so that you can then fold it
in half like that and that's all there is to making your very own art easel and
I'm telling you these things work great for more recycled ideas check us out at
sophie-world.com