DVD Art Kit Lap Desk

If you’ve been Pinterest’ing long enough, you’ve seen this particular DIY, which is a super cute idea for those long car rides, like ours. 10 hours. One way. At least 2 times per year. With an 8 yr old. And a 9 yr old. This summer Peaches will be road tripping for 5 hours with us, then another 5 with my niece and her hubs and 3 boys… so I made one of these for her and one for the oldest boy (4 yrs old). 

I’d like to introduce you to the DVD Art Kit Lap Desk! I found the DVD Art Kit on Pinterest. Pinned it. But I felt I could make it better. How annoying for small hands with small laps to have that small case slipping all over when it could be the best place to do your doodling!?

I made my DVD Art Kit. You can find instructions on it here: Instructables or with Stacey Vaughn. I chose to use Contact Cement as my adhesive for the entire project. It was what I had in the house, and it worked fine. In fact the whole project is from things I already had in the house. 

•  DVD Case
• Manila Folders (as card stock for the art kit portion, and base for the lap desk portion).
• Contact Cement (well ventilated room, and a disposable sponge brush)
• Scissors
• Scrap Material
• Rice
• Poly-Fiber Fill

I then recalled to my poor scattered brain a few tutorials I found on making lap desks. I didn’t bother to look them up. I like to just wing it on this sort of stuff. You can too! Or you can do what I did:

It got all bubbly!

First, instead of reiterating the whole DVD Case tutorials for you, I will just tell you what I did different. Where the original DIY leaves the clear plastic free for the child to decorate front and back, I only needed the front to be decoratable (is that a word?). I put contact cement on one side of a piece of manila folder and the back of the case, inside the clear plastic (following adhesive directions). Then I opened the case to invert the clear plastic and put contact cement on the inside of  the clear plastic, and the outward facing part of the manila folder and adhered them. This leaves the back of the case well secured, but the front and spine free to have a decorated paper or whatever placed inside. I flipped the DVD Case’s movie slips and used them for both the cases I made.

Now for the lap desk portion:

I laid the DVD case on my material and cut the material about 3 inches bigger. I pinched the corners of the material and ‘sewed’ them into a box like shape with Liquid Stitch from Wal-Mart. I’m a Girl Scout Mom… I glue patches on all the time. The stuff is WONDERFUL! I cut a piece of manila folder the same size as the DVD case (I cut it on the fold so I had a double layer).

Pour a handful or so of rice into the center of the material, then a puff of poly-fiber fill over that. On top will go the manila folder, apply your adhesive to the edges.

Fold the material up over the edge of the folder onto the adhesive. You will probably have to keep pushing the fiber fill under the folder so it stays out of the way.

When the material edges are secure, apply adhesive as directed to the entire manila folder piece, and materials edge.



Apply adhesive to the back/secured portion of the DVD case as well.






Put the two together!

You now have your very own DVD Art Kit Lap Desk. What a mouth full!

Decorate, as you will. Sophia calls hers a doodle box, and I decorated Marek’s with Cars items from the insert inside the scavenged DVD case. I will be looking for chubby coloring pencils for Marek, and Sophia already has quite a collection of colored pencils to use in hers. Hopefully these will keep them busy, and they will keep each other busy. That would be a miracle!