At my office and my home it seems like the pens grow legs and disappear. I guess they are just like good candy in that aspect. Someone accidentally puts it in their pocket and walks away or one of the kids takes the pen that is supposed to be by the phone and it is lost forever in their bedroom. By making a flower pot of pens it makes them so much easier for people to leave the pen where it is instead of carrying it away. It's much harder for someone to walk off with a flower than with a pen!

Whether you are a parent or a teacher or work in an office, here's what you need to keep track of your pens and always have one ready when you need it:

Materials

• Artificial flowers of choice and a matching number of Pens – the quality or look of the pen in unimportant as it will not be seen – I like to use the inexpensive Bic pens for this project
• Green floral tape
• Dry beans or rice or large jingle bells
• Small to medium Terracotta pot

The pen becomes the flower stem and will be wrapped with the green florist tape. Take one bloom, with some stem attached, from your artificial flower bouquet; you may need scissors or wire cutters to do this. BUT DO NOT USE YOUR MOTHERS GOOD SEWING SCISSORS! Many artificial flowers have a thin wire under their green plastic coating which provides the structure and support to the stems. Put the flower at the top of the pen with the stem lying alongside the length of the pen. With the pen/flower in one hand you will take the floral tape in the other and you will wrap the pen and stem together.

Florist tape is interesting because it stretches, so stretch it as you wrap around the stem- this is what exposes the stickiness and makes it stick to itself. Wrap the pen from top to bottom and do it smoothly around the end then work back up the stem/pen and rip it instead of cutting so make a better end- it will stick to the stem and just smooth it up and down to make the wrinkles disappear.

The finished product will be a green pen with a flower at the top. The writing end of the pen will be exposed, so you can throw away the pen lid.

Make as many pens as you like by following the directions.

With your completed bouquet of flower pens, now you need a place to plant them!
Imagine if you will what you want the pot to look like. You can decorate with paint, stickers, markers, or puff paint or fabric and mod-podge. Children may want to present their bouquet and pot as a gift from them for Mother’s Day or a birthday and may want to paint the pot to match the colors of the flowers- or not. If it is a gift for a teacher you could use school color and put your teachers name on the pot.

If it is to be used for the front office of an elementary school it would be fun to have a different pot and bouquet for each month of the year and make them to match the colors of the seasons. For a business if it will be placed on a front counter, a simple “Welcome” or “Thank-You” might be appropriate.

Fill the decorated terracotta pot with dry beans nearly to the top. The beans become the medium to hold the pens erect when the pens are in the pot, thus making it look like a bouquet of flowers in a pot. You could also use dry rice in the pot as the “dirt”. I really like the look of white navy beans because they resemble small rocks, but the other day I saw a pot of pens full of jingle bells as the “dirt”- the slight jingle as someone takes a pen out to use alerts them to action at the front counter.

Use your favorite flowers, colors, and themes and enjoy the time spent crafting with your children!