Giant Pencil Tutorial

For my Teacher Appreciation Week themed monthly dinner, I decided to make a DIY giant pencil for my centerpiece.  It turned out really cute, and I've had quite of few people ask me to post about how to make it. I think a bit smaller version of it would make an excellent teacher appreciation gift for an elementary teacher at the beginning or end of the school year. You can even drill holes in the top that can fit colored pencils or markers if you want it have functionality instead of just being cute decor.

Step 1: Purchase a 4x4 block of wood.  I purchased mine at Home Depot.  Now, the entire 8' block will run you just under $10, but since I only needed about 4 feet, I looked through the Home Depot stack for a block with half of it damaged. Home Depot gave me a 70% discount since the majority of the wood was unusable for most projects.  For me, it was perfect.  I paid just over $3 for the wood and then just cut off the damaged portion. 

Step 2 and 3:  Use power tools to shape the wood to look like a pencil.  My husband did this for me using a reciprocating saw and a belt sander. I forgot to take photos as he did it, but you can imagine the cutting needed to make the block pencil shaped.  Next, I painted the wood a golden color. I used paint I already had and mixed yellow with orange until I matched the designed pencil color.

Step 4:  I used pink to paint the eraser part of the pencil.  Don't worry about painting all the way to the yellow because that part will be covered.

Step 5:  I used my Cricut machine to create a stencil with blue painter's tape for the #2  portion.

Then I painted it black.  Once it dried slightly, I pealed the painter's tape off and then touched up any areas.

Step 6:  Paint the tip of the pencil black.  I left the wood part unpainted to keep the wood look.

Step 7:  Use foil tape (a Home Depot purchase) to wrap around the pencil under the eraser to match the metal look of a real No. 2 pencil.

That's it! I put the the finished pencil on my table with a ruler table runner I made out of cardstock.