One of my gifts to my girlfriend this year was a set of paints and brushes that I found on craigslist. She'd been holding on to some canvases, but it didn't look like she'd ever do anything with them unless somebody went out and got the paints for her.

To make the gift all the more special, I decided to build her an easel too. I've had lots of left over fragments of PVC in my closet for a good two years now. And I'm finally just using up the last of them on this project.

The easel design is extremely simple. For every connection, I just used a big hole on one side and a screw hole on the other. Everything locks into place and it stands upright.

One cool feature that we knew we needed for our little apartment was the ability to collapse it and store it away. Just removing one screw from the top corner lets the whole thing fold up like this.

The last step is going to be cutting this piece of wood down and coating it to make a little painter's pallet.

The gift went over great and Claire's really exited to try it out. So hopefully soon, I'll start putting up paintings that she makes.