Over the Door Easel - $8

After making my 30 Second Whiteboard, I needed somewhere to put it as I use it. Thus, the Over the Door Easel was born. It takes after clothing hooks that go over the top of a door. Mine cost me $8 in supplies from Home Depot.

While I built mine to hold my whiteboard, it could be used for painting, drawing, or any other easely purposes.

Determine how big your easel needs to be. If you're using a frame, don't use the number they give you, that's just the glass. Measure the actual width of the entire frame. I suggest making the actual easel slightly larger than you need. The height doesn't matter much. Draw a line for the width.

Next you have to decide where to put the brackets. I put one 8 inches up on either side, and two on the bottom, each 5 inches from the center. Use your square to align them and mark two screw holes for each one.

At this point you can cut out your wood. I also cut a 2 inch strip of wood to use as a ledge on the bottom.

It goes without saying to observe all safety standards when using power tools.

Hopefully you have an electric sander, it will make things a lot easier. Sand down all of your wood. The electric sander also allowed me to round the edges and corners. This would be the time to stain the wood, if you want to. The sanding didn't remove all of my pencil marks, but it may be hard to see them if you're painting it. Just keep that in mind.

Use a drill bit slightly smaller than your screws to make a hole on each dot that you drew. Screw in all four brackets. It helps to bend the bracket back some to give you better access to the holes.

Measure how thick your door is. Draw two lines on each strap with the thickness of the door between the two lines. The distance from the edge to the first line is how much of an overhand you want. I used two inches. Make sure that your lines are perpendicular to the edge.

Use your vise to bend the strap on each line. Tighten the jaws on the line and bend it by hand.

Now that you have two candy cane shapes, feel free to run around and have fun with them. They're great for opening fridge doors and...not much else.

Put the hooks on a door and hold up the easel to them, in order to determine how far down they need to be screwed in.

Flip your easel over and find the center. I put them each 5 inches from the center.Use the square to align them and mark the screw holes. Drill and screw them in.

At this point, your easel is done. I opted to add a ledge to mine, if you did, too, continue to the next step.

Find the center of the ledge and the center of your easel, line the two up. Pull the ledge out an inch or two (if it's too far back, your board will cover it). Mark the holes from the bottom of the brackets onto your ledge. Drill and screw.

Two things that you might want to do is add a ledge to your ledge and add some felt pads. A ledge ledge will stop things from rolling off. Mine is just a line of hot glue around the ledge.

Adding felt pads to the back will stop the easel from scratching the door behind it. Pads on the brackets will stop the screws from scratching your frame/work.

Enjoy your Easel!