How To Make A Miniature Easel In 4 Steps

We love holidays and not just Christmas. Anytime we see a holiday in the future, it’s an opportunity to show our friends and family how much we appreciate them with handmade gifts. With Valentine’s Day in our sights, we got started with hot glue crafts like this miniature easel. We’ll show you how to make this DIY easel in a snap with 4 easy steps.

What you need:

• Small tissue paper squares (1-3)
• Paper straws (4)
• Surebonder Detail Hot Glue Gun
• Scissors
• Surebonder Mini Hot Glue Roll

Step 1

Take two paper straws and spread them about three inches apart, then angle the tops so they are touching. Take your glue gun and glue the tops together while keeping the straws angled. You are essentially creating and upside down letter V. The hot melt may take a minute to cool enough where you can set the piece down, but be patient as gluing two pieces on an angle can be tricky.

Step 2

To make the easel stand up we need to glue the third straw to our upside down V on an angle. Place a dab of hot glue on the back side of your V however, be sure to angle the two already glued together back as we want to make sure the easel will be able to hold a small frame or photo. If the three straws are glued together standing straight up, the easel will most likely not be able to hold the picture very well. The angle helps secure the picture on the ledge. Hold the pieces together while keeping your fingers in a safe place and be sure the glue is holding before moving on to the next step. Don’t worry about the glue looking messy as step 3 will cover that and make the top of the easel look cleaner.

Step 3

The last step is to create the ledge that the photo or picture will sit on. Take the last paper straw and hold it up against your easel. The straw will be too long to use the entire straw for the ledge so put the tip of your thumb near where you would want the cut off point to be. Carefully, remove your thumb and take your scissors to cut the excess off but keep it. The smaller portion of the straw will be perfect to make a thicker ledge for your photos. Take a little hot glue on a side of the smaller straw and line it up in the middle of the large one. Try to center the smaller portion and allow it to cool. Once cool, line up your ledge and apply a few small dots of hot melt to the easel and place your ledge on it. Carefully hold the ledge in place until the glue has cooled.

Step 4

Now that we have the three main pieces of our easel hot glued together and the ledge adhered, we can clean up the top and help secure it. Place glue all around the top of the easel where you previously glued them together. Next, take a sheet or two of tissue paper, and tightly place the tissue paper all around the top and over the glue. Keep the edge of the tissue paper level  when you begin to wrap it around. Add small dabs of glue to corners if you need to adhere the tissue paper to itself to keep a tight wrap around the top.

There you have it! A mini easel for mini paintings, pictures or photos! Be sure to check back with us as we will have new Inspirations by Surebonder on our blog soon!