We’ve been very active at the Fo Guang Shan Temple lately. We’ve been participating in all sorts of activities — Chinese New Year celebration, selling our “No Self, No Sufferer” shirts (I’ll post photos of the shirt soon teehee), Thursday reading club meetings, month-end book club meeting, Chinese lantern-making contest, essay writing contest, reading club out-of-town trip and of course attending the prayers/service. Sounds like I’m in a church. LOL. But I don’t consider Buddhism as a religion. For me it’s a practice. Okay, I’ll save this topic for another post.
Right now I just want to show you something cool. teehee. I mentioned earlier that Mr. Snuggles and I participated in the lantern-making contest and our chapter came up with a lantern made with ballpen cases. Our group only used the cases and not the inks inside. I was so eager to get my hands on the ballpen inks (I don’t know if that’s what you call the “bones” or “skeleton” of a ballpen. haha) because I’ve been planning to make a pen out of old newspapers. I didn’t want to buy my own pens, discard the cases and take the inks. That would not be earth-friendly at all. 
The discarded inks from our lantern project gave me the perfect opportunity to make my own sustainable pens! woot woot!
So how do we make a sustainable pen out of these ballpen inks?
Easy! Just get your newspaper and roll it on your ballpen inks like your do your sushi! Teehee. You can even make a cap for the pen!
I used newspaper on one pen and leftover thick paper on the other. Both worked really well.
I couldn’t find our old, junk shop-worthy magazines (translation: I was too excited to make the pens than look for them LOL) so I didn’t get to make one. But I’ll sure try making one made with magazine. They’re much more colorful and glossy.
But they both turned out awesome, don’t you think so?
To shape the paper to resemble a ballpen case, you can lower the paper each time you roll so you’ll end up with a cone-ish tip, just like a real pen!
And I’ve gotta tell you, it’s sturdy too and won’t crumple in your hand when you write.
Look how awesome it is!
Cool right? I’ve been using them the whole day. I wrote with it, drew with it, doodled with it and scribbled with it. Unfortunately, the only color I have of the pens are red…. so yeah, I’m so ready for Valentines. LOL!
And because our group has around 400++ of these inks waiting to be discarded, I’m going to ask them if we can do this for the remaining inks! Each pen took me approximately 5 minutes or less to make.
Okidoki, that’s enough excitement to last me a week, I guess. (Yes, I am THAT simple. teehee)
Have a wonderful weekend ahead!
