Article: Brighten up your desk space

If you're like me, you spend a lot of time in a drab, featureless cubicle.

Bland grey walls, blah, boring desk.

But it doesn't have to be that way!

The topic of one of my favorite podcasts, CraftyPod (the podcast that's all about making stuff with tons of great information for the crafty entrepeneur) was "Craft Up Your Cubicle: Projects for your workspace" (CraftyPod #27, 6/1/2006). It was all about how to bring some crafty goodness in to brighten your dreary little desk space.

Among the wonderful ideas was one about how to turn your pens into a gorgeous bouquet of flowers.

(this is not a new idea and you can find many tutorials on the topic -- at the same time, I read about it in the Big Ass Book of Crafts)

This is what you need:

• A handful of pens
• Some colorful silk flowers (I bought two beautiful mixed bunches at Michaels, which was having a sale, for only $3.50 each -- I used two and made two sets, one for my mother-in-law for Mother's Day)
• Floral tape
• A wide-mouthed vase to act as a pen holder
• Possibly some wirecutters

This project is so simple that even an eight-year old can do it. In fact, one of my eight-year old twins wrapped the bouquet shown above.

Simply clip the stems to the desired length, then wrap the floral tape to secure the pens and flowers snugly together.

It's that easy!

If your flowers are hard to arrange in your vase, a handful of floral accent marbles can help them stand up tall.

One nice side-effect of this lovely arrangement is that it makes it a lot less likely that your coworkers will accidentally walk off with your pens.

Enjoy!

By MollyLee of www.mollylee.etsy.com