Melissa & Doug Easel a Decent Product

One thing that has always fascinated me about our daughter is how she is quickly turning into a budding artist. Our house is literally covered with her drawings, starting with her early scribbles to more recent projects that actually look like something. But, paper is expensive so we started looking for another way to encourage her new-found hobby while keeping costs down.

The thing that attracted me to the Melissa & Doug Deluxe Solid Wood Art Easel was the versatility it offered our daughter. One side of the easel is a dry-erase board. The other side is a chalk board. In addition, the easel is equipped with clips and a roll so you can add paper for drawing and painting projects as well (this is on the dry-erase side for easy clean up too).

The easel also comes with deep drawers for paints, markers, brushes, etc. More importantly, it is adjustable. This comes in handy since she's at that age where she grows a couple inches every few months. She already towers over the last easel we bought her.

So far, our daughter seems to love it. She's in front of it a couple hours a day either drawing or playing her new favorite game, tic tac toe. She's even managed to get some painting in on it; even though we had to use normal sheets of paper since I haven't been able to find the rolls around here.

I only have two concerns with the Melissa & Doug Easel. First, it isn't as sturdy as I would like it to be. It's sturdy enough where it isn't a danger to our daughter. But, it does stand a bit uneven and will rock a bit when you're using it. At first, I thought this was simply our floor but we've moved it around and have the same problem every where we place it.

The other problem I have is the bolts are covered by colorful screw-on caps. These look nice but I've already caught my daughter trying to take them off. I'm not sure if she's able to and don't think it will cause any danger to her if she does, but it still makes me keep a close eye on her when she's using it.

Assembling the easel also isn't much fun for parents. The instructions are OK but don't show a lot of detail. We ended up having to re-do a couple of steps because we used the wrong-sized bolt or used the wrong wood piece.