Making these tiny colored pencils, their little cups and a tray to house them was a fun project. As a bonus, it helped provide focus for the office area in the 1:12 scale cardboard house I’m making…stay tuned for that as I will be working on it much more after I finish the elf house. This was a relatively easy thing to make with some basic tools and some patience.
I started with toothpicks and cut them all the same length (mine are 7/8″) with the uber-handy miter shears, then sanded the cut sides flat and smooth. I decided how many of each color to create then painted the pencils and their tips accordingly craft acrylic paint straight from the bottles. Next, lengths of drinking straw were used as cups. I sealed the bottom sides by pressing them into a pool of hot glue I’d placed on a metal surface to get the flat bottom, then, once it was cooled, I trimmed excess pooled glue away with scissors. The tray is made from card stock which began with a thin strip of card stock which I fashioned into a circle and attached the ends (attached end to end and then secured with printer paper pieces glued on either side across the join). I glued (tacky glue) the circle to a flat piece of card stock and set about waiting for the glue to dry again. Once the glue was dried, I trimmed excess away with scissors.
My recommendations:
- use tacky wax or glue the cups onto the tray (and possibly the pencils into their cups) because it is difficult to move the tray around maintaining upright ups and placement on the tray.
- resist the urge to dip the wooden picks as it adds too much paint and loses the realism. I used a small brush to paint on the paint.
- paint two coats of the paint to get coverage sufficient to look like a real life-sized colored pencil
- avoid using markers to create the pencils as the marker ink tends to wick in the wood. I did have luck darkening a pale pink paint with a marker carefully applied atop the paint as I wanted a brighter pink.
- since all the materials out, I went ahead and created a couple of writing pencils with yellow paint, dark grey sharpened tips and pink nubs to simulate erasers. I used a gel pen to draw a line between the pink and the yellow paint simulating the metal ring. I have not pictured those here but they’ll make their debut when I create the office space mentioned above.
