How to Make Your Own Display Stands

A few days ago, I was thinking about tiny easels, as one does. I got an idea about how to make very simple, inexpensive display stands for flat-finished smalls, and I cleaned up my sewing room just so I could make some! 

These little stands take just minutes to make, and I would have gone on making them if I hadn't had to fold laundry and do other responsible things. Here's how you do it:

If you're making a stand for a regular-sized small finish, these two sizes of craft sticks will do. They're from JoAnn Fabrics and are the mini jumbo (bag of 50) and the mini (bag of 150) size. You'll also need some long beads of some sort. I used wooden ones, but any of this 
size and shape will do. You just need beads long enough to accommodate the width of your finished piece. For a larger stand, just size everything up. (The mini jumbo sticks are like regular popsicle sticks, but wider. The wider width works well for embellishments.)

Hot glue a few beads to a mini jumbo craft stick. Make sure to glue them along the lower edge.

Use another craft stick to make sure the beads are even.

Glue another stick to the beads. ***Make sure the beads are glued to the center of the second stick. This will give your stand a slight backward lean.

This picture is of my prototype, where the beads were glued to the bottom edge of both craft sticks. It worked, but I wasn't happy with it so I took it apart and re-glued the second stick as described above. So on yours, the beads should be glued to the middle of front stick. Add a couple of the mini sticks to the back to support the finished piece.

Add a couple more mini sticks and that's it!

Since stitchers like to examine the back of things, here's the back. These Halloween and Thanksgiving finishes are pretty large and these little stands hold them just fine; they're very stable.

To decorate the front, cover the craft stick with ribbon/trim/fabric before you glue it to the beads, but wait to add embellishments until after you've completed the stand. Glue them on to the upright stand. The purpose of this is to make sure the embellishments are even with the bottom of the stand and not below it, which might make it sit unevenly.

As you can see, there's really no end of possibilities with these little stands. Once I had it figured out, I could make one of these--including the embellishment--in less than 10 minutes. They can be made to match specific finishes; the stand holding the Halloween piece is decorated with the same trim used on the finish, and a fuzzy black cat from JoAnn's. The wooden leaves on the Thanksgiving stand are from Hobby Lobby, and the snowflake, deer, and fall buttons (I removed the shanks) are from various craft stores. 

All of these finishes are freebies I've previously blogged, but here are the links again:

Noel freebie

Thanksgiving freebie

Haunted Tea Party freebie