MEGAN SCHILLER
The Art Pantry
Saying Goodbye
Hello Art Pantry friends! This is my official Art Pantry goodbye letter, written at the end of May, 2026. If you are arriving here from a link you found on Pinterest or referenced in an article or on another website, The Art Pantry website is no longer available as of June 16th, 2026.
But I do have a few FREE resources for you below, in order to continue my mission to help kids' develop creative confidence.
If you're curious to know the story of The Art Pantry and why it is "graduating," read on...
The Graduation
I started The Art Pantry in late 2009 when my first daughter, Karuna, was 18 months old. At the time it was called “Littlest Birds Studio” and mainly involved a bunch of toddlers from my neighborhood squishing paint or clay between their fingers in my back cottage. It was messy (but meaningful) work and became the springboard for what eventually grew into The Art Pantry.
This work with kids and art went through a few iterations during that time. I moved the classes from my home to a tiny commercial space in a sweet community hub with a surf shop, garden center, and adult pottery studio. The name changed to Make+Believe and I began selling my own art kits along with my favorite art supplies online. I was then pregnant with my second daughter, Ora, so I hired two teachers to take over some of the classes and eventually sold the studio to one of the teachers when Ora was born.
This is when I, yet again, re-branded the business and changed the name to The Art Pantry. But back then it wasn’t the same Art Pantry that exists today. Instead it consisted of sourcing, purchasing, storing, and shipping art supplies (this looked like scouring trade shows, renting space in a warehouse, and sometimes paying more to ship the items than their retail price). This was when Amazon was getting more well-known and offering free shipping on many of the same supplies. I felt I had to also offer free shipping in order to compete (not a smart business decision!). I quickly realized that I wasn’t cut out for e-commerce operations so I made a big pivot into the world of design.
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If you’re ever questioning a career direction or creative endeavor, it really helps to take inventory of what you actually enjoy doing. This is often found in the unnoticed moments while doing other tasks. So I asked myself,
What is the thing that truly lights me up when I’m running an art studio or managing my household?
This thing for me was design. Designing the studio space, designing my home interiors, designing the website and brand elements of my businesses.
And with this revelation, The Art Pantry (as it is known today) was born. I began designing home art spaces for kids and sharing content around creativity, art at home, art prompts and doing collaborative art as a family.
I even took The Art Pantry on the road for 3 months, sponsored by the Airstream Endless Caravan campaign, to host pop-up family art events with collaborators around the country. You can read about this adventure in my memoir, Leaping Towards the Extraordinary. I also wrote an ebook on how to set up a home art space for kids and created a digital video course, Art Pantry Design Camp, on the same topic.
Many clients, course sessions, and family canvas challenges later, I eventually compiled all of that experience and knowledge into my book The Art Playroom, published by Quarry Books in 2023.
At the time this book was published, my kids were growing up and I wasn’t as involved in the day-to-day of kids art as much as before. I was incredibly proud of this book and it felt like the perfect way to wrap up my work with kids and art —from my first days as a preschool teacher out of college, all the way up to this moment.
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But my passion for art and design has always been a throughline. Even as I was still designing kids art spaces, I started offering my services as a brand and website designer and have focused more and more on this as my kids have grown.
This journey started when Karuna was 18 months old and she is now about to turn 18 years old.
It boggles my mind! Karuna is graduating high school in a couple of weeks and will be heading off to college while Ora will be graduating middle school and starting high school in the fall.
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And with these graduations, the time has come for The Art Pantry to have it’s own type of graduation.
It's hard to call it a goodbye, that feels like too much of an end. But rather, this is a moving on, a release of years of work into the world to live independently and hopefully continue to inspire parents of young children to set up art spaces in their homes, allow their children to explore open-ended art materials, and spend time together doing collaborative art.
In order to do this and to celebrate The Art Pantry moving on, I am offering my online course, Art Pantry Design Camp, as a parting gift to you. See details below.
So What's Next?
My creative work will continue on in a few of the endeavors that I have been building for some years now.
1) Branding and website design (I offer strategic branding and website design and have been working with clients for the past 7 years)
2) Writing and book publishing through my imprint Netherstoned Press (I have written and published my own memoir and have designed and published two novels, a literary anthology, and a coffee table book for clients).
3) My own artwork (mixed media paintings for sale and occasionally on view at art shows)
4) Neon Flow process art retreats for women (I'm excited to share that Kebby McInroy and I are continuing to host our retreats after a hiatus during her cancer treatment and subsequent move to Mexico).
All of the projects and services above can be found here on this website, MeganSchiller.com
The Art Pantry's Parting Gift to You
My goal with The Art Pantry has always been to help bring more creativity into children's lives. This passion hasn't gone away and If I can continue to do this even after The Art Pantry moves on, I will.
The Art Pantry website will be shutting down because it is too costly to maintain if I'm not actively working on the business. But my digital course, Art Pantry Design Camp, will remain on the Thinkific course platform for the time being and I would be sad to see the content go to waste!
So with the course being able to live on, I have decided to offer it as a gift to you.
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Art Pantry Design Camp is a self-paced 5 week course that will help you set up an organized and inviting home art space for your kids.
It will also give you plenty of ideas to keep your space organized and keep your kids engaged in the materials for years to come.
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​One thing to note: The course is comprised of video instruction and downloadable PDFs that include clickable product links (within the US). I won't be updating the links so if you come across any that are out of date and no longer exist, they might still be useful if you search for similar products using the description.
I will always be dedicated to helping kids build creative confidence and so I will try my best to be available for questions as you go through the course. Feel free to email me!
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​Would you like free access to Art Pantry Design Camp?
Thanks for celebrating The Art Pantry's graduation with me!
Family Canvas Challenge
One more gift for you! Download the supply list* and instructions for my free family canvas challenge.
1 canvas + 8 materials + 4 weeks + family time = the best activity ever.
This challenge is for families with children from toddlers to teens! It's for families who want to carve out special time to do art together and create a meaningful masterpiece.
*As with Design Camp, I won't be updating the suggested product links so if you come across any that are out of date and no longer exist, you can search for similar products using the description.
Say Hello!
Do you have a question about Art Pantry Design Camp, the Family Canvas Challenge, or anything else related to kids and art?
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E-Mail me at: megan@theartpantry.com
Or fill out the form.
And most of all, for those of you who have been around for a while, I want to thank you sooooo much for being a here, for engaging with the content, joining in the challenges, sending your kids to my art classes, doing family art with me on the road, taking the Design Camp course, buying my books, hiring me to design your art space, or even just quietly reading my emails or social media posts. I love you and wish you all the best.
─Megan Schiller
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Leaping Towards the Extraordinary
One Family’s Unconventional Journey Through Schooling and Travel
Leaping Towards the Extraordinary is a story about our young family of four coming out of a deep suburban sleep, rejecting cultural expectations, and experimenting with a radical life that supports our deepest values. It begins with a wake up call and ends with a journey around the country to live, work, and school on the road.
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Through this memoir-style tale, I write about how this all unfolded through determination and surrender. I write about the many highs and lows of following my intuition and taking big risks as a mom.
This is a story about motherhood, intuition, education, community art, and adventure, but it is ultimately a story about coming home to ourselves and to the extraordinary.
