Hello, my name is Katrina and I am a member of Tangie Baxter’s Creative Crew. Each month I bring you a mixed media project using some of Tangie’s digital products available at TB&CO. 

This month I have a fun bespoke pencil project using Tangie’s new Be here now kit.

I have been covering pencils now for years and they are such fun to do.  They look great if you match them to your project or planner and make great gifts for all ages as you can easily fit the decoration to the recipient.  After all, who doesn’t need a pencil, especially one so pretty?

To begin with you need the base: the pencils. I like to use non sharpened pencils, they can be tricky to find but they are easier to work with and give you a much nicer finish once you sharpen them.  It doesn’t matter what colour they are, just as long as they have a flat surface. 

I chose 3 of the background papers from the "Be Here Now" kit and printed them out on one sheet of paper in a landscape form.

"Be Here Now"

If your pencils have a shiny surface you will need to sand them down with a nail file or sandpaper. This gives the glue something to grip.

Cut your paper down to the length of your pencil.  Apply a wet glue to about an inch of the paper and line your pencil up on the edge.

Tightly roll your pencil up in the paper, adding glue to the paper as you go, untill pencil is completely covered.

Leave them to thoroughly dry.

Once dry, cut the paper as close to the pencil as you can and glue down any excess paper.

Now that your pencils are covered you can decorate to your hearts content!

Before we do though, I need to talk about sealing them.  Because I printed my papers on an inkjet printer I needed to seal them.  If I didn’t  any contact with water would make the ink on the paper run.

So before I decorate them I seal them with either a varnish or the glue I had used to glue down the paper.  If it is a very thick glue then add a tiny amount of water to it, just be aware of the ink running problem.  It might be best to test it on a scrap of the paper before you take it to your beautiful covered pencils.

This only applies of course with inkjet printed paper but if you think your finished pencil will have a hard life then it doesn’t hurt to give it a bit of extra protection.

For my pencils I used a glittery water based varnish I had bought at a craft shop.

Here are my pencils to give you some decorating ideas.

This pencil was covered in the grey and pink paper so I dipped the end into some chalk paint and left it to dry.

I added some thin double sided tape around the top of the dipped paint and then dipped it in some silver guilding flakes.

I also added a thin pink ribbon and a bow around the bottom of the painted section and glued a gem to the top of the pencil.

This pencil was covered with the flag style paper.

I then dipped it into a glossy red paint and while the paint was wet dipped in some metal spangles.

When the paint was dry I added a strip of thin double sided tape and dipped it in the silver guilding flakes.

This pencil was covered with the gold and red line paper, dipped into some metallic paint.

When dry I glued one of the shrink plastic Cactus I made in the second part of my post.

I added this pencil just to give you another idea. I made this one as part of another project coming up soon in one of the Walk through the Vault posts.

The red part of the pencil was part of the paper, it shows you how you can use the design on the paper to your advantage. 

I just added a piece of double sided tape and guilding flakes along with a sticky pearl which I glued to the end.

As you can see they sharpened beautifully and these were very cheap and cheerful pencils.

If you haven’t come across guilding flakes before you can buy them from craft shops.  They are tiny flakes of silver and other metallic colours that will stick to anything sticky.  You then rub the excess off and they are transformed to this beautiful metallic sheen. Just be very careful when you open them as they are so light any puff of air and they will be everywhere, believe me!!  If you need more help with finding them let me know and I will help if I can.

So now we have our beautiful pencils how else can we jazz up our planners?

Well, nowadays there are so many products you can buy to print on.  One of my favourites is printable shrink plastic.  It’s the same as the little free gifts we used to get in our cereal, if you are a certain age, that you put in the oven and it shrank to half the size.

You just choose your image, I chose the watercolour cacti from Tangie's  "Be Here Now" kit.  Print your image out onto your printable shrink plastic, making sure your images are lighter than you would normally print them.  Because they are going to shrink, their colour will darken as they shrink.

Once printed and left to dry for a bit, you can cut them out leaving a small border.

If you want to make them into charms, as I did, then punch a hole in the top. Remember the hole will also get smaller too.

You can see how much they shrink down.  Follow the instructions on your packet to shrink them.

You can make them into all kinds of cute things for your planner. 

 I made a charm:

I just made a small pompom using some textured fibres I had using the quick and easy pompom makers you can buy now.

I also made some paper beads using the scraps of paper left over from my pencils.  If you would like to know how to make paper beads have a look at my paper Christmas tree post.

I put them all together using some jump rings, head and eye pins and some other small beads.  Then I made these little things too and another little charm using my paper beads.

I also glued a couple of the shrunken cactus to paper clips to make a couple of little fun paper clips.

Finally I made a 3D bow with some of the left over paper and also glued it to a paper clip.

Well, there we are!  Thank you for sticking it to the end :)

I hope you enjoyed my post and will give one of the ideas a go. If you do I would love to see what you create, why not post it on our Facebook page.

If you have any questions or problems about any of the projects, just ask and I will be happy to help if I can.

Untill next time, take care, 

                                     Love Katrina x

[Posted by: Katrina Rollings]