100 Colored Pencil Desk Organizer

When you sit at a desk all day it can be quite boring. This desk organizer is just the type of thing that can take your bland desk and make it fun! One side holds pens/pencils/markers/etc and the other side is for business cards.

I teamed up with Preston from Urban Shop Works (check out his projects on here) and he showed me how to use a single box of 100 coloured pencils to make this project.

Don't forget to watch the video at the top of the page and if you have any questions, please feel free to ask in the comments.

Below are links to tools and materials I used in this article. It is either the exact tool/supply or something very close.

Supplies:

- 100 Coloured Pencils (Crayola recommended)

- Scrap melamine

- CA Glue

- CA Glue Accelerator

- Silicone caulk

- epoxy

- epoxy colour pigments (optional)

- Acrylic sheet

- Water based polyurethane

- 5 minute epoxy

Tools:

- bandsaw

- Fondant ball tool

- Drum sander

- Table saw

- Belt sander

- Drill press

Note: The amazon links in this article are affiliate links, meaning, at
no additional cost to you, I may earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.

Cutting the coloured pencils seems like a super simple step and it would be if the pencils were not cylindrical. Cutting a cylindrical object on a power tool can be scary, but there are ways to mitigate your fears.

First I covered the throat plate with tape. This gave me a "zero clearance" area to minimize the pieces getting stuck in the cut. I then was able to set the fence to just over 3/4".

I tried a few different techniques to cut the pencils. Rolling the pencils gave a nice cut, but took a long time and often resulted in the piece flying backwards. Slow and steady worked alright as well, but I often found myself binding the blade a bit because I was not able to hold the pencil perfectly perpendicular to the blade. I tried cutting multiple pencils at the same time, but that didn't seem to work very well either. The technique that I preferred was to go quick and ensure I followed through and push beyond the blade.

Each coloured pencil is cut into 8 pieces. Don't try and cut the last piece with the sharpened end, just leave it a bit long and it will be sanded off later.

Another thing to be mindful of is where all the little pieces go! We set up a double bucket system, with a bucket hanging off the front and back. This way it was easy to push the pieces forward as you were cutting them and the few that went backwards were caught in the other bucket.

The mold is made from melamine. If you are lucky you will have some laying around the shop, if not check the scrap bins at your local home center as they often have off cuts that might be big enough for your mold.

The base of the mold was 8" wide and around 12" long (all I wanted was to ensure it was longer than I needed).

The sides of the mold were around 2" tall. The measurements really didn't matter that much as long as they were taller than the width of the melamine + the length of your coloured pencil pieces.

I cut these all on the bandsaw, but any cutting device would work (i.e. circular saw, table saw, etc)

To assemble the mold I just used CA glue (aka super glue) with accelerator so that I didn't have to hold it long. We will later be disassembling this mold so the strength of CA glue is just perfect.

I only put on three sides. The last side will be attached once the coloured pencils pieces have all been stacked.

Even though melamine is very smooth and not much sticks to it, you still want to add a mold release. I used paste wax and just applied it with a rag.

The corners of the mold all need to have silicone caulk applied to them. If you don't apply silicone the epoxy will leak out.

After applying the silicone a fondant ball tool was used to create a perfectly smooth radius (better than you can get with your finger!). The round ball also cuts the silicone and squishes it out to the sides which will make removal easier.

Once the silicone has cured you can easily remove the excess without affecting the smooth radius. Just run a razor blade under the excess and pull it off.

This was a long and tedious process. The best way was to have the back of the mold raised so that gravity would assist you in keeping the bits in place.

What I don't show here (or in the video) is that I ended up doing this 3 times. The first time we forgot to put silicone in. The second time we poured too much epoxy and the pencil pieces started to float (but we didn't notice until it was too late) and then the third time was the charm!

You want all of the pieces to be perfectly aligned with no gaps. We used a sharpened piece of scrap wood to push the pieces around until everything lined up nicely. Check your work twice as once you pour the epoxy there is no going back!

I somehow missed getting footage of adding the last piece of the mold. But you can see here that we ended up gluing it in place and then adding silicone from the outside. Adding the piece afterwards allows you to get a very tight mold so that you can waste less epoxy.

Mixing the epoxy resin is really a science. We used ecopoxy UV resin and it is a 1:1 ratio of resin and hardener measured by volume. You should read your label and follow whatever it says as some epoxies are measured by weight and some have different mixing ratios.

We ended up making a lot of epoxy resin, way more than we needed for my project as were were making a few projects at once. So don't go by the measurements in the pictures.

Make sure to scrape the sides of your mixing container to ensure that all of the resin and hardener is mixed.

Adding pigment or dye to your epoxy resin can add a bit of flavour to your project. We used some ecopoxy pigments and mixed white and black to make a dark gray colour.

Note: Preston recommended that I don't leave it clear as it often has bubbles showing. Despite his recommendation, I made one that was clear and he was right there are tonnes of bubbles as shown in the last picture.. I believe that this could be eliminated by either using a pressure pot or vacuum chamber (I don't know which would work better)

The fun part, pouring the epoxy resin!

After pouring the resin into the mold, make sure to shake and jiggle it around. It is very easy to have bubbles trapped.

As the bubbles move to the surface you can use a torch or heat gun to pop the bubbles.

(also, as I mentioned previously, don't put too much resin into the mold as the pieces will start floating! If you have foresight you could make something to go on top of the mold and push down on the pencil pieces to ensure they don't float.)

Once the epoxy cures you start the long process of sanding. Using a drum sander we put the work piece through while it was still in the mold. This will give you a perfectly flat reference surface for when you turn it over.

Keep taking passes until all of the epoxy resin has been removed.

Take out your favourite mallet and give your mold a whack! Leaving the peices long on the mold allows you to get good leverage and makes mold removal that much easier. I used a flat head screw driver to remove the work piece from the bottom of the mold.

The last bit just wouldn't come off. Instead of risking breaking the work piece, I cut off the mold using the bandsaw. I then took it to the disk sander to clean up the cut.

Now that it is out of the mold you can head back to the drum sander and sand the bottom. Again keep going until all of the epoxy has been removed. My intention was to end up with a 1/2" thick work piece, but in the end after all of the sanding it was closer to 3/8".

The pieces that make up my desk organizer are pretty simple. The first piece is 7 3/8" x 3 1/2" and then the next 2 pieces are 3" x 3 1/2".

I used my table saw for this. You will notice that my hands look very close to the blade. If you are not comfortable with these cuts, find a different way to make the cuts.

In order to show off as much of the coloured pencils as possible I wanted to add some acrylic pieces to the pencil cup area. To attach them I needed to cut a dado/slot.

I used a flat tipped blade in my table saw set at 3/16" high. The fence was 1/8" away from the blade and I ran the two smaller pieces through.

I used my table saw to cut out two pieces of acrylic to 2" x 3 1/2".

I sanded the work pieces to 240 grit.

I didn't end up cutting up all 100 coloured pencils. I saved two in order to make the spot to hold the business cards. I cut one in half (approximately 3 1/2") using my bandsaw.

Taking the side that wasn't sharpened I flattened one side using a belt sander. (I made sure that the colour name and brand would be visible)

I then attached it to the larger work piece using CA glue. It is about 3/4" set back from the front and 1/2" in from the side.

Before assembling the project I coated the entire thing in water based polyurethane. I did this before assembly to ensure that all of the piece was coated.

Because I had coated the entire project with a top coat of finish I needed to scrape some of that off. If I did not do this step than the pieces would not actually be bonded together and instead would have been bonded to the finish and I was worried that it might pull off.

I used a utility blade to scrape off the finish and tapped it off on the area to ensure that I didn't scrape off any areas that wouldn't be receiving glue in the next steps.

To hold up the business cards I wanted to use half length pencils. So I first cut one of the extra pencils I had in half. I then sharped the piece that had two flat ends. Combined with the piece left over from a previous step, I had three half pencils.

I then located three spots on the work piece about 1" back from the business card stopper. I drilled three holes that were the same size as the pencils (1/4")

I mixed up some 5 minute epoxy and assembled the project. The pencil cup parts were put in place and then I slid in the acrylic. I held in all in place using a wooden mallet (which if you are interested, you can find how I made it here)

The business card backer pieces were also glued in place, but they didn't need any clamping as they were already a tight friction fit.

Now the best part, filling up the pencil/pen cup and adding your business cards. This has been a wonderful addition to my desk and it really brings a smile to my face whenever I grab for a pen/pencil!

I hope you found this project as fun as I did. If you did I would appreciate if you check me out on other social media:

YouTube

Instagram

If you make this project (or something inspired by this project) I would love to see some pictures! If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask them in the comments.