I made this pot o’ pencils (and pens) for my friend’s little girl who turned 11 today. She loves to write and draw (and so do her brothers), so I figured that they wouldn’t steal her cute flowery pens and pencils and it would make a great addition to her desk in her lavendar room. 🙂

This was very simple to do. I purchased a tin pot and two bunches of flowers (97 c each) and some white kidney or pinto beans (not sure what they are cuz I don’t eat beans, just wanted them to be white-lol!) from WalMart.

The first thing I did was to start with the K which is a Basic Grey chipboard alpha. I actually traced the original K onto a piece of black BG chipboard and hand cut it with a craft knife, then inked the edges with Hydrangea Ink by CTMH. (I wanted to keep the original K with the original letters to use as templates.)

After I’d inked up the edges, my fingers, and my workspace, I ran my 3/4″ ATG gun all over the face of the K and then adhered some Petal (CTMH) cardstock to the K and then inked it up with Hydrangea Ink and a fingertip sponge dauber. (The ink helps make the finished product have more of a rich color.)

Once the ink was dry on the CS, I smeared a good even layer of Liquid Glass (CTMH) over the entire K followed by a hefty sprinkling of tiny glass micro beads from Michael’s. Warning: make sure you use a craft tray under whatever you’re sprinkling the beads over and make sure you sprinkle slowly because the darn little glass beads bounce all over the place and are difficult to clean up.

I made sure the layer of Liquid Glass and micro beads was dry and then tapped off the excess beads into the craft tray and then covered the entire K with another thick layer of Liquid Glass and let it dry overnight.

After I finished the K, I punched holes in my little tin with the Crop-a-Dile and wove two pieces of ribbon (grosgrain & organdy) through the holes and left plenty of ribbon on the end to tie to the K later. (The next morning I punched a hole with the large punch on my Crop-a-Dile from We R Memory Keepers, tied the K to the tin with a few extra pieces of ribbon and a silk string, and trimmed up the ribbons.

I cut the flowers from their “bunch” with wire snips and then wrapped them to the pens and pencils with green floral tape. I poured the white beans in the tin and assembled my bouquet.

This was super fun and super easy!!! Enjoy!!