Day 132 of 365

The pen-cil is mighty

Today's experience started early. I woke up with the pencil making idea in my head. That's how it works sometimes. I knew this would be something to do because I've always wanted to buy one of those tree branch pencils from the cracker barrel gift shop. If you've been there you know what I'm talking about.

On day 132 I hand crafted a stick pencil.

The materials are so quick. I went out in the back yard and snipped a few branches from my favorite trees. One magnolia, one lilac and another mystery bush because the limb was so perfectly straight.

I used drafting pencil leads for the writing part of this little project. I happened to get HB which is

pretty hard and that was smart because it did require a lot of pressure to insert the lead.

I trimmed away most of the twisted and gnarly twigs to create the shafts. The next part was easier than I thought it would be. I drilled the center hole for the lead to fit into. I was worried I might split the pieces so I took my time. I drilled out four just in case.

The final part was gluing it all together. Sticky good fun happened and I slathered the lead and globbed a bunch on the top on the sticks. Everything came together but the length of the lead was limited by the depth of my drill hole.

As experiences go this was so fun. I'm waiting for the project to dry so I can sharpen and use them. If you're a scout mom this might be a great activity once your kid can handle a pocket knife and a drill, or you could go old-school and use a hand drill for the pioneer affect.

On day 132 I enjoyed this mighty experience.

Love & Light