dragonflies love flowers

This idea idea will be part of a Mother's Day class of mine in April. This idea of a pen with a faux silk flower was inspired from the book Pretty Little Things by Sally Jean Alexander. I adapted her idea to suit clear plastic tubing from Home Depot or any similar store. The size tubing I used, located in the plumbing department, is 3/8" x 1/4". This measurement means the outside of the tubing is 3/8" in diameter and the inside is 1/4". The bundle of tubing was 10 feet total for around $5. I cut the tubing to 5-1/2" - just long enough for a nice, graceful pen. This size tubing allows a Bic stick pen to fit perfectly - nice and snug - into the tube! The beauty of this is, if you are in love with your pen when the ink dries up you can remove the old ink barrel and insert a new one! :) Here's my steps: After cutting the tubing I stamped the adorable Lockhart dragonfly randomly onto white paper - roughly 1-1/4" x 5-1/2". The paper I used was the white backing of a printed decorative paper - not cardstock. Cardstock is too thick and too heavy to curl nicely into a tiny tube. I colored in the little dragonflies with markers, then rolled up the stamped paper nice and tight around a skinny dowel (you could try a paintbrush too) and inserted it into the plastic tubing. Using wirecutters I removed the ink barrel and nib from a Bic Stick pen, and inserted the barrel & nib into the plastic tubing. No need to glue - the fit is perfect. The nib will push a bit of the stamped paper out the opposite end of the tubing. Trim paper flush with tubing using scissors. Next I put a dollop of E-6000 adhesive (you could use any strong industrial cement/adhesive) into the opposite tube opening and inserted a faux flower with stem trimmed to about 1/2". Allow to dry, then stamp the flower petals and add vintage silver glass glitter. Again, the idea for dressing up the petals is from Sally Jean Alexander. I am going to try varying the length - making my next pens longer or shorter, or use plain text weight (think computer printer paper weight) patterned paper like the rose pen below! Thank you for stopping by!