Kids Crafts: How to make a Washi Tape Pen Pot

Spring is here and I’m busy tidying, decluttering and reorganising my house. My desk area and office need a really good sort out and my stacks of filing need to be dealt with. One thing I always have on my desk is a pen pot. Or rather, I have one for pens, one for pencils and one for felt tips too. That alone makes my often cluttered desk space look and feel a bit more organised. This week, in an effort to make my desk a brighter, cheerier space, we made a Washi Tape Pen Pot.

Kids Craft: How to make a Washi Tape Pen Pot

I’ve had a little collection of washi tapes in my craft drawer for a little while now. I’ve used them for a few small things, but I thought they’d be great to decorate a tin can ready to turn it into a pen pot. Recycling at its best!

Make sure you really wash out your tin before you use it. I gave mine a scrub then just to make sure I ran it through the dishwasher. If you don’t do this you might find that your pens and pencils smell a bit like baked beans or dog food.

How to make a Washi Tape Pen Pot

You will need:
One clean tin can
Two or more rolls of washi tape

Kids Craft: How to make a Washi Tape Pen Pot

How to make a Washi Tape Pen Pot

This is so simple. Carefully tape around the tin can in stripes, making sure you’re being really neat. Build up the lines until you’re near the top of the tin can.

Once you get to the top, you can either leave the rim of the metal tin can exposed or cover it with tape. I chose to cover it with tape. I carefully wrapped it around the top of the can. Then I pushed the overhanging tape over the rim of the can and tucked it neatly in place.

Kids Craft: How to make a Washi Tape Pen Pot

My Washi Tape Pen Pot was finished and ready to be put to good use on my desk. You can use whatever colours of washi tape you want, go wild, go crazy, or stay sensible. It’s entirely up to you.

Check out my other craft tutorials here!

Kids Craft: How to make a Washi Tape Pen Pot

Vintage Writers’ Essentials from IWM Shop

This month I’m starting an online food history course with the University of Reading, it’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time so I’m excited to be taking the plunge. Naturally I’m preparing for it in the best way I know how, not by reading relevant texts and getting up to speed, but by buying notebooks and stationery. This week I’ve picked up a few writers’ essentials which should see me though work and study over the next few months.

The Imperial War Museum Shop is one of my favourite places to find vintage style stationery and homeware and they’ve really come up trumps with this beautiful notebook.

Writers' Essentials

This lovely large leather bound journal is similar to the notebooks soldiers will have carried with them during the first and second world wars. It is stunning, the pages are hand stitched inside the leather cover and there is a band of leather to wrap around it to keep it all together.

The natural paper is thick and speckled, so it looks really authentic and almost handmade. The notebook has a real vintage feel about it too, just having it on my desk makes me feel happy. It’s beautiful and I know when I take this out to meetings or lectures to make notes that it will turn a lot of heads.

The large leather bound journal measures 15.5cm x 11cm and costs £20. It is a real statement piece of stationery and I’m very much in love with mine.

Writers' Essentials

It’s almost impossible for me to do any work without a brew by my side, and I couldn’t resist this mug with one of my favourite non-swears on it. Blimey is something I say quite a lot (and get ribbed for). I’ve always said it, but since becoming a mum I’ve toned down my “effing and jeffing” a bit and I’m all about the blimey and the crikey these days.

Writers' Essentials

There are two different versions of the non-sweary mug, Blimey and Crikey. Either would have suited me well. These porcelain mugs are the standard size for a proper cuppa and cost £9 each – perfect for fans of retro non-swears like me!

Writers' Essentials

I’ve got a few more bits to buy before my course starts, not least my text books, but I’m loving my vintage style writers’ essentials. I always think if you’ve got nice things to work with, then work seems like less of a chore and more of a pleasure.

You can find lots more vintage and retro stationery, books and other goodies on the IWM website.

Note: I was sent these writers’ essentials in return for a review, all images and opinions are my own.

To craft, or not to craft – Celebrating Shakespeare 400

This year sees the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare. To celebrate his life and work, stationers Viking sent me some crafting goodies and asked me to create a craft project featuring one of Shakespeare’s quotes. So I invited my craftiest friend Sarah around for an evening of crafting, chat and at least one bottle of chablis.

Sarah is an accomplished paper cutter and makes the most beautiful paper crafts, so she brought her paper cutting kit and I got my craft box out. To our existing stock we added the crafting goodies Viking had sent for our evening and we mulled over the brief whilst searching for Shakespeare quotes online. Independently we both came up with a similar idea.

I had some watercolour paints and a couple of spare canvases, we both decided to paint a background on the canvas and then add our Shakespeare quotes. Sarah loves stars and the night sky, so she chose to paint a dusky sky and use a quote about stars. I love the colour teal, so wanted a teal-ish canvas with a “go get ’em” semi motivational quote for my office.

Sarah began by painting her sky and then left her canvas to dry whilst she cut out some stars.

Shakespeare

Once her canvas was dry she used a silver metallic paint pen to write her quote and then she carefully glued her paper stars and some sequins in a shooting star formation on the canvas, I thought it looked really beautiful.

“It is not in the stars to hold our destiny, but in ourselves”

Shakespeare

I chose the famous quote from Hamlet “To thine own self be true” and I selected a much smaller canvas with an easel. After painting the canvas with a few different shades of teal and blue (the photo doesn’t show the colours as well as it should) I left it to dry before using a paint brush and some burnt sienna watercolour paint to write my quote on the canvas.

Shakespeare

It didn’t take very long to do and I’m not 100% happy with it, but I like it well enough for it to take up residence in my office.

Having finished my intended project a little too quickly, I decided to have a play with my new golden feathered calligraphy quill and the little pot of ink. I can’t do calligraphy but I thought I’d have a play anyway.

Shakespeare

It was rather good fun and something I would try and use in future craft projects. There’s a bit of a knack to using a quill and a pot of ink, so it took me a few blobby goes before I got something I quite liked, and I quite liked this.

Shakespeare

And using the metallic gold paint pen I wrote this, a line from Sonnet 116 which I’ve been completely in love with for years.

Sarah and I go to a monthly craft club and we enjoy getting stuck in and having a go, often with mixed results, but it’s all good fun and makes for an interesting evening. This was our first craft evening together where we’ve not been supervised by experts, and I think Sarah in particular has produced something especially lovely.

We’ve decided to have a few more craft evenings together, mainly because you don’t get wine at craft club I think, but also because it was interesting and fun.

Note: We were sent products free of charge from Viking to use to create our Shakespearean masterpieces, and also in return for this blog post.