I remember these being a pretty big thing in the 80s when I was a kid, but apparently this particular craft has faded a lot over the years, because I had a hard time finding any of them online. In fact, I'm not even sure what they are technically called, although I found one article that referred to them as "worry pencils."
This craft takes your basic everyday pencil, one of the most useful items in the world, and makes it distracting and difficult to use. Hooray?
You start with fake fur. (Always a dubious beginning.) Cut off a bit, glue it to the end of a pencil, and add two googly eyes. Now your pencil has a crazy hairdo, and the googly eyes are staring at you.
The idea here is that you smooth out the fur, then twirl the pencil in your hands and make it all stand out, crazy-like. This is fun for the first two or three times you try it. Then the googly eyes fall off and the glue starts to peel. And then you are stuck trying to write notes in class with a pencil that is weighted all wrong, and without a usable eraser.
I always loved the idea of these when I was a kid. I loved the bright colors, and the soft fur, and the way it turned an ordinary pencil into a cute monster. But then I found myself wanting a regular old non-decorated pencil, one that I could write and erase with. Isn't that kind of the point of a pencil in the first place? The fur also makes it impossible to store your pencil inside a pencil case, which was designed to accommodate a normal-sized pencil, not one with three inches of hot pink fake fur sticking off the top.
Talk about a case of a craft that over-promises and under-delivers!
Image courtesy Flickr/djwtwo
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