Easy Borders - Without Measuring!

Creating a border without using a ruler

Using rulers is an important skill for kids to develop, but it can add a lot of time (and sometimes frustration) to an Art lesson. Sometimes it's best to do a separate lesson on using rulers and find ways to avoid them during Art time!

In my last teacher workshop, I shared an easy way to create a border without having to use a ruler. Here's the key.... your paper needs to be proportioned to a 3:4 ratio. In other words, if you are working on a 9x12 size paper, the 9" side is 3/4 of the 12" side, so that size paper works perfectly for this technique! All you do is take another piece of paper of the same size and fold it in half, then center the folded paper on the other paper and trace around it. That's it! No measuring, just eyeball it and that's close enough!

This is a great way to add a decorative border around any drawing or painting. I often use the 12x18 size paper, so in order to make this work I trim both papers to 12x16 (there's the 3:4 ratio again), then fold one in half and center it on the other. This technique not only saves your students a lot of time, but it usually saves lots of erasing, too!