Pencil Birthday Treat for School

Ellie turns four next week. She also starts in a new class at her preschool next week, so I wanted to send something nice with her as a birthday treat for the class.

I've seen these pencil goodies several places, and it was originally featured in Creating Keepsakes Magazine's September 2010 issue.

The original uses a roll of Rolos, but for four year olds, whose parents I don't know yet, I thought this might be too messy and too much chocolate. So, I opted for a roll of Lifesavers (I'm not exactly sure why I think Lifesavers are better than Rolos for little kids, but I do).

[Note: If you want to make these with Lifesavers, they are not always easy to find. The hubby spent literally hours going to countless grocery stores, drugstores, etc. in search of these....it finally dawned on him that he should check a 7-11. He had to buy out two stores to get enough. He's quite fabulous, isn't he? We also just figured out that they have them at Michael's.]

Here is what you need for each pencil:
Roll of Lifesavers
Hershey's Kiss (paper tag trimmed off)
Piece of Yellow Cardstock cut 3 1/2" x 3/14"
Piece of Pink Cardstock cut 5/8" x 3 1/2"
Extra pink cardstock for circle to cover the top of the pencil
Piece of foil cut 3/8"x 3 1/4"
Scotch Tape
Liquid Glass
Scoring tool (optional)

I have seen these where the yellow cardstock is left unscored, but I like the overall effect of scoring better as it mimics a pencil more. Scoring takes time, and you should score your cardstock before you cut it into the pencil pieces. I scored the paper every 1/4".

The Lifesaver wrapper moves a bit, so I taped part of the edge on one end to the inner foil wrapper with scotch tape. I also used a small piece to secure the yellow paper to the inside Lifesaver paper wrapper so I could get the yellow piece wrapped as tightly as possible. (I kind of shaped the paper before putting it around the wrapper, folding/bending it on the scored lines. If you don't score, you will still want to curl it a little to help with the wrapping.) I hung the paper off the edge of the Lifesaver roll by about 1/8". That way the Hershey's kiss will look more like a pencil tip as opposed to an onion dome. Use Liquid Glass to secure, the great thing about Liquid Glass is that it dries pretty quickly and VERY securely.

For the eraser, I curled the paper a little, ran a line of Liquid Glass around the top edge of the yellow paper and then also secured the ends with Liquid Glass. Same thing for the foil piece, which I first folded in thirds lengthwise.

I then glued the pink circle to the end(I used the CM 1" mini circle punch. It doesn't fit exactly, and more kudos to go the hubby for going through and trimming off the excess after they dried.) I found that attaching the Hershey's kiss was easiest if I stood the pencil on end, added a nice glob of Liquid Glass and put the Hershey's kiss on top. You need a fair amount of Liquid Glass because the surface of the lifesaver pack is so uneven...this takes a while to dry.

That's it!

You can decorate as you see fit with stamping. In my example I used powerpoint to create a little tag, printed a bunch of them and then cut them out and glued them onto the pencil. Usually school pencils are no. 2 pencils. Mine are no. 4, which of course represents my daughter's fourth birthday.

Update: I just created a 'Freebies' section for the blog, and uploaded the powerpoint file for the No. 4 tags. Feel free to download/make changes to suit your needs.