Monday 12 September 2016

MY CLASSIC PENHOLDER

Photo Credit: Seven3Studios

Anybody who knows me, know I love collecting pens and nice journals, but mostly 'beautiful' pens...whether I need them or not.

Writing this post now, I remember an incident that happened when I was 9 years old (or younger). I collected my brother's pen from his backpack while he was in the bathroom. He left for school unaware of my mischievous act and couldn't take notes in class. At the back of my head I was playing with him oh! (and I also loved the pen sha), but my mum flogged me for it. When my dad came back from work and met me kneeling down in his room, I was glad because someone finally came to my rescue and understood my actions he had a different idea. In his words: "where's the cane?...she needs to be flogged again, na so thief dey start...steal a needle, steal a pin, one day you will steal a cow".....and that was how I had a round two flogging, just because of pen oh!

I don't collect my brother's pen again  (sometimes), I just collect pens (like...I buy pens), because of how nice it looks, how light it feels or fits in my hand, or how the ballpoint feels on paper because that will determine how nice my writing looks....odd abi (right) ? Well! you have to share this 'pen-love', to feel how I feel. So over a period of time, my collection became too plenty and scattered around, and owning a pen-holder became necessary. Since I didn't know where to get one, I decided to make one which I featured in my first post HERE.

Enough of the plenty talk because in today's post, I want to work you through my first DIY (do-it-yourself). So come along.


THINGS YOU NEED:

*An Empty Water-Bottle

*A Nice Fabric(less than 1/2-yard)

*Top Bond (glue)

*A Pair of Scissors

*Cotton buds (Q-tips)

*An Old Toothbrush 

*Pressing Iron

*Pen/pencil/Temporal Marker/Chalk

*Ruler

*Ribbon

......Erhmmmm.... I think that should be all.....


ALRIGHT....................
  • First thing I did was to cut my water-bottle into two. I did this using a hooooot knife....yes! a hot knife. I literally left a (condemned,old) knife in fire till it was glaring red.....and swoooooosh...I got a clean cut.  


I discarded the upper part of the bottle (but you can convert it to something else, maybe a funnel) since the bottom part was what I needed. Just in case your cutting wasn't neat and left the edges rough, you can use a hot pressing iron to create leveled edges as shown below in this picture I found online.



If your bottle is very colourful, it can pass for a pen-holder already (as someone I know is already using his own like that - colourful or not!), but not me...


  • I decided to give clothes to the naked body of my pen-holder. This is where the nice fabric comes in. I traced out the exact length of fabric I needed by wrapping the fabric around the body of what was once a water bottle using a pen to place marks where necessary. 
or

If you have a (tailor's) measuring tape, you can use it to measure the circumference of the bottle and transfer the measurement to your fabric using same tape or a ruler. Remember to add an extra inch for overlapping of fabric and just in case your measurements are too small - excess is better than inadequate,

  • Next, I applied a generous amount of glue to the body of the bottle using my old toothbrush. It is better to apply the glue to the bottle and not the fabric, as this will allow you to control and move the fabric easily till it is well positioned.


Wrapping or covering the inside is optional. In my case, I didn't bother to wrap since my pens will sit pretty inside the holder and do the cover-up job for me. 


  • Now its time for me to cover up the point where the fabric overlaps each other, to make my work look neat. I used a bow to achieve that. With a ruler I measured out 9-inches of satin ribbon in three places to make three little bows.
http://www.thriftyfun.com
 Just in case you don't know how to tie a bow

  • Using Q-tips (cotton buds), I was careful not to spread glue on my fabric but to apply the glue to the exact spot where I wanted my bow to be. 


DON'T WORRY THE GLUE WILL DRY CLEAR



DONE!!!



END OF MY ADVENTURE


I believe this was very explanatory and will help you have an organised workspace. The beauty of DIYs is that you can always tweak one thing or the other to suit your taste

Errrhm....BY THE WAY;

In the course of typing this post I learnt something new about Q-tips out of curiosity. I guess if google had hands, it will slap me for asking it all manner of questions, as I searched for the meaning, spelling and origin of Q-tip (cotton bud). I always thought it was called Q-tip because the points where shaped like the letter 'Q'(DON'T LAUGH), but I found out that 'Q' stood for quality. I also found that Q-tip is actually a brand name that turned to the general name for earbuds (the way every 'toothpaste' is called 'close-up' and every 'seasoning' is called 'maggi' in Nigeria). This shows the strength of a brand (my opinion though).  
I also learnt that Leo Gerstenzang manufactured Q-tips in the 1920's, after he watched his wife clean their baby's ears with cotton wool wrapped around one end of a toothpick.

You can read more about the Q-tip story HERE and HERE, if you are as curious as me.



HAVE A LOVELY AND PRODUCTIVE NEW WEEK!!!

***MUCH LOVE***



  

5 comments:

  1. Beautiful, Chizzy!!!! And very helpful too 😀💃💃 as I am also a book and pen lover (beautiful, beautiful ones) 😊

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hinsteresting piece(in Falz's voice),beautiful pen holder and awesome recycling idea too.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Very educative :) ... thanks

    ReplyDelete
  4. I steal/ collect pen too till date. U r not alone in MJ voice

    ReplyDelete