Stationary Stand

Keeping pens and pencils organized seems daunting, especially when little hands are at work creating great pieces of art. With this straight-forward stationary stand, cleaning up and organizing pens and pencils will be as easy as coloring!

I used soft redwood for my stand, but any type of wood could work for this project

The redwood chunk I had had a knot in it, so using a table saw, I cut off the entire end with the knot on it. My working piece was 5" x 9"

I measured out and divided where I wanted to drill the holes where the markers' heads would fit into. I used a staggered design spacing, consisting of three rows, and alternating 4 and 3 holes per row.

I used Crayola brand washable markers, and measured the diameter of the caps precisely at .532". Using a 9/16" drill bit, which is just larger than .532", this will ensure that the hole in the wood will be slightly larger than the marker, allowing for easy insertion.

Using a drill press (a standard drill will work perfectly fine as well) I drilled into the pre-measured markings. I drilled at a depth of 1 inch.

After I drilled the first hole, I tested to make sure the drilled hole was both wide enough and deep enough for comfort by inserting a marker into it. It worked.

I continued on to drill into all of the pre measured markings.

Next, I sanded my block of wood to get clean, straight edges. Wonderfully, this step also removed any of my pencil markings. score!

Remember that I had to cut off a chunk of my redwood because of the knot? Well, I didn't want to waste any of this beautiful wood, so I cut off just the knot portion of the wood and salvaged another workable piece to create a stand for colored pencils! This process is exactly like making the marker stand except that the diameter of the pencils was obviously much smaller.

I measured the diameter of the pencils at exactly .274" and used a slightly larger drill bit, 5/16", to allow for easy insertion.

This block of wood was much smaller than the stand for the markers, which is fine, because colored pencils are much thinner, but I had to place the drilled holes much closer to one another.

Using the same type of staggered design as in the markers stand, I drew out three rows, with alternating 5 and 4 holes per row.

After making the initial hole with my drill press, I tested to make sure its width and depth were ok by inserting a colored pencil. It passed the test, and so I continued on to make all 14 holes.

Next, I sanded all edges of the block for a polished and clean look.