These artists don’t use pencils as tools to create art. They just turn the pencils themselves into art.

Hopefully, you will be as impressed as we are by the level of detail and craftsmanship that went into these pieces.

(We’re only using one example from each artist so as to not infringe on their work. If you want to see the complete collections, please visit their web pages.)

Alien bursting out of a pencil tip, by cerkahegyzo from Hungary.

Chained pencil by Mizuta Tasogare and Kato Jado.

Heart in a pencil, by Dalton Ghetti.

Looking for a unique and intriguing way to store your pen collection? Why not try a vintage vending machine.

There’s a TV show in the US called ‘Auction Kings’ on which people bring in rare, historic or collectible items to be appraised and sold at auction in a gallery in Atlanta.

On one recent episode, a man brought in one of the coolest pieces of pen memorabilia that I’ve ever seen: A Vendorama Ballpoint Pen Dispenser.

The Vendorama is a machine built in the 50s and 60s by Victor Vending Company in Chicago. They were built from oak, trimmed in chrome and baked enamel, and held up to 168 pens. The buyer dropped in a dime, turned the handle like a gumball machine and got one ballpoint pen.

As you can see in the photos above, the pens lay horizontally in slots on a center drum, perfect for preventing leakage or drying. The face of the machine opens outward on a hinge (with a key), providing easy access to the pens.

How awesome would that look sitting on a cabinet, stocked with all your favorite pens?

The good news is that there are still more Vendoramas out there for sale on eBay and other auction sites. The bad news is that they’re cool collectibles and that means pricey. One recently sold on eBay for US$610. Another, with the side refill dispenser, is offered by an antique dealer for $US585.

But there’s hope. The one sold on Auction Kings went for just $325.

Besides, if you’ve already spent hundreds or thousands on a pen collection, what’s a little more for the perfect storage cabinet.

What do you think?

Have you ever heard of a Skerple marker?

Neither had I until the other day when I ran across an article by a college professor about a Chinese knock-off of the Sharpie marker. Turns out, the Skerple looks like the Sharpie in almost every regard, even using similar font for the name, and can be found in many discount stores, as well as on eBay.

(Funny Junk has a close-up of one of these Sharpie knock-offs. And the Skerple isn’t the only fake. You can also see examples of others, like the Shoupie and the Sharpei.)

The professor says he shows a Skerple to his students in his business class and asks them to identify it. Most every time, they believe they’re looking at a Sharpie.

By the way, that marker on the right is a Skerple, not a Sharpie.

And that is only the beginning of the market for knock-off pens. Many of us have heard of high-end fountain pens like Montblancs being counterfeited, but apparently the fake pen market goes all the way to the bottom of the scale to the least expensive ballpoint pens.

For example, police in African nations frequently confiscate giant shipments of counterfeit pens believed produced in Asia and shipped to the African continent for sale there.  Check out this video of cops in Kenya seizing thousands of “Beifa” ballpoint pens that are basically just Bic Cristals.

Knock-offs are enough of a problem for Pilot Pens in Thailand that the company website acknowledges that customers may very well run across fakes and asks them to report any they find.

In 2007, the LA Times identified the town of Wengang, China as a center of counterfeit pen production, including Parker knock-offs.

The town, in southern China’s Jiangxi province, has been making writing implements for centuries. Famous calligraphers and poets such as the Tang Dynasty’s Wang Bo looked to this place for their maobi, or brush pen.

In more recent years, villagers not only cornered the nation’s market in maobi but also added metal pens to their repertoire.

Today more than 2,100 businesses in Wengang (population 70,000) make brush pens, and 1,000 others produce ballpoint, fountain, gel-ink and other modern pens, says the China Writing Instrument Assn. In 2005, the town made and sold roughly 7.5 billion brush and metal pens — enough to supply one to every person on the planet, and then some.

While there are many legitimate pen manufacturers in the town and local officials deny that counterfeit pens are produced here, the Times reported, just “ask other manufacturers, retailers and even passersby on the street whether they make or sell fake Parker or Montblanc pens, and often their reply is, ‘How many do you want?’”

Since then, China reportedly has been cracking down on the production of counterfeit goods nationwide, but has been largely ineffective in shutting down these operations.

So next time you spot an unbelievable deal on a pen, no matter the brand, you might want to give it a look to be sure what you’re getting.

So, I read this excellent piece over at Medium about keeping a notebook for memory and inspiration, and I couldn’t agree more with the notion of carrying a notebook with you everywhere you go.

Last year, I touched on why taking notes by hand still beats doing it digitally. It’s just a better process for most of us, especially if you are in the least bit creative. And, as Stephanie at Rhodia Drive brought up recently, the time to commit a thought to paper is in the instant in which you have it.

Thus, the need for a notebook ever to hand.

And the best notebooks for carrying around when you’re away from the comforts of desk and chair? Plain old reporter’s notebooks. Can’t recommend ‘em highly enough.

My personal process is this: I have reporter’s notebooks everywhere. Stacked around my apartment, in my car, and in my pockets. Whenever I get a story idea, an address, a phone number, a factoid, a grocery need, it goes in whatever notebook I’m carrying that day.

When I get home, I dump the notebook. Story ideas and factoids go into Microsoft OneNote, phone numbers into my contacts file, things to do into my Google to-do list, and personal reflections, etc. go into a journal. When I get to the last page of a notebook, it goes on a stack and I start on the next one.

Once every few years, I go through those stacks to make sure all the important pieces have been mined. Then the notebooks go in the trash. Obviously, I don’t place a lot of long-term value on my everyday carry notebooks.

Now I know there are all sorts of highly recommended notebooks on the market. Rhodia, Moleskine, Field Notes, and so on. I just don’t think of them as everyday carry notebooks as much as for journaling, for storing the thoughts and ideas that you want to preserve for a lifetime.

Reporter’s notebooks, on the other hand, are just right for using and tossing.

First, these things are cheap, maybe a couple of bucks apiece. There’s no need to spend more than that on something you are going to use for what amounts to temporary data collection.

And second, they are designed perfectly for exactly one thing: Holding in one hand and writing with the other while you’re standing, sitting or moving.

Reporter’s notebooks are simply constructed. They consist of a wire coil, two pieces of cardboard and lined writing paper. Just wide enough to fit into the palm of one hand while in use, and into a back or side pocket when not.

(Wire side up when in the back pocket. Otherwise, you sit on it, it smashes and the pages won’t flip anymore.)

The narrow size helps emphasize short, fast writing, mostly fragments and phrases, although, in a pinch, I’ve composed entire news articles in them.

The paper’s not high quality, but it doesn’t need to be. It will take some abuse, including getting wet. The pages are perforated so you can rip one out to give to someone else, or if you need to remove a damaged page.

The wire binders are usually wide enough that you can slide a pen into them. And most of them have space on the covers for you to write dates and other details to help you keep your notes sorted.

Quality varies.

Tops brand tends to be more common, and less expensive, but their back cardboard piece is too flexible for me. Portage makes a reporter’s notebook with much stiffer front and back covers, providing a more stable writing surface when the book is flipped open. Still, if you like to fold your notebooks, Tops and Ampad are best for that.

They also have some other helpful uses…smacking bugs that get too close, shielding your head from rain, doubling as a coaster (cover closed, of course).

The bottom line is, they’ve all served me well for 15+ years, and if you’re looking to make a change, I’d definitely suggest trying out some reporter’s notebooks.

Thanks to everybody who entered! You made this one of our best giveaways ever!

Now, for the winner…

Karen Howe, No. 32, you have been randomly selected to receive a set of 18 Stabilo Be Wild ballpoints, rollerballs and highlighters. Congratulations!

To claim your prize, please leave a comment below and use the ‘Contact’ link at the top of the page to send us your mailing info.

It’s a great set and we hope you have a great time using them!

Thanks again to everyone who entered. Stay tuned because you are going to have another chance to win something cool in next month’s giveaway.

Ana at The Well-Appointed Desk tries out the Pilot Juice 0.5 mm.

Nifty at Notebook Stories points the way toward an online gallery of artists’ sketchbooks.

Stephanie at Spiritual Evolution of the Bean revisits the Pentalic A La Modeskin Traveler’s Pocket Sketch Book.

Brian at OfficeSupplyGeek dips into the Pelikan Edelstein Turmaline fountain pen ink.

Mary at From the Pen Cup doesn’t find anything exciting about the Lamy Al Star Pearl.

Osmian at Drawing with a Squirrel presents the shades of J. Herbin Diabolo Menthe ink.

Margana at Inkophile tests various inks on Moleskine paper.

Rhonda at the Blog of Rhonda Eudaly reports on her new Premiere Pen P1 from a Kickstarter project.

File this one under ‘awesome.’

We’ve all seen the TV shows/movies where the intrepid hero saves the life of a choking character by nicking open the throat and making a breathing tube out of a pen or whatever else is handy. While it makes for great drama, it isn’t the sort of thing you expect happens all that often in real life.

Except that it does. And it actually works. And Irish researchers have shown that even the untrained are capable of performing the procedure more or less successfully.

At Trinity College in Dublin, nine junior doctors and medical students with no experience in this type of procedure were given scalpels and Paper Mate FlexGrip Ultras and asked to perform emergency cricothyroidtomies on cadavers.

(A cricothyroidtomy is what we all think of as a tracheotomy, making an opening in the throat just below the Adam’s apple and inserting a tube to create an airway.)

The procedure was performed 14 times.

According to the study:

Eight of 14 (57%) procedures were deemed successful. No major vascular injury occurred. Injuries to the thyroid and cricoid cartilages were common; four of 14 (29%) of these injuries were fractures.

Researchers concluded that “surgical cricothyroidotomy with a ballpoint pen and blade is a feasible option in extremis.”

Interestingly, not all pens are suitable for this sort of thing. In fact, another study in the UK found that the diameter of most pens is too small to allow enough airflow to make effective emergency breathing tubes.

Researchers took eight “commonly available ballpoint pens” and evaluated them based on their size, the ease and speed with which they could be taken apart and turned into tubes and the amount of airflow resistance through the pens.

(Not sure how they decided the pens were “commonly available” because there were no Pilot, Paper Mate, Uniball, Pentel or other common pens on the list, although it did include Staedtler and the Parker Jotter).

Only two pens passed the test for use in emergency cricothyroidtomies: The Baron Sprite and the Bic Softfeel Jumbo. The Sprite seems mainly to be one of those mass-ordered promotional pens that businesses hand out. The Softfeel Jumbo has been discontinued.

What do you want to bet that certain Japanese pens could probably do the trick in a pinch? Pilot has some wide-barrel pens. Or something like the Zebra F-301, if there was nothing else.

Even the US government’s own Skilcraft pen has reportedly been used for that purpose by the military.

Whichever ones work, it’s pretty cool to think that the pens we walk around with every day could be turned into life-saving devices if the need ever arises.

Remember: This is a procedure of absolute last resort, only to be used in the most extreme emergency situations. Don’t take this as a suggestion to go about puncturing people in the throat.

If you were of a mind to, you could find yourself quite a collection of fountain pen-related jewelry online.

Etsy has fountain pen nib necklaces and earrings, Cafe Press has necklaces with photos of fountain pens and even vintage fountain pen ads, and Amazon has flashy fountain pen nib cufflinks.

It’s a plethora of bling for pen geeks.

Browsing through all of it, I find myself wondering whether fountain pen jewelry is one of those things that is really neat in concept, but maybe not so much in reality.

I definitely can see the appeal in some of the more subtle pieces, such as this one that features a 1909 Waterman ad, or this pendant with a stylized drawing of a nib. They are accessible, and attractive, as a fashion accessory that helps communicate a bit about the wearer.

I’m not so sure, though, about pieces made from pen parts, like a pair of earrings that are just fountain pen nibs, or a necklace with a fountain pen hanging from it.

One thing I hear a lot from fountain pen lovers is how much the pen serves as a fashion accessory and attention grabber – which is pretty much the purpose of jewelry, too, right? So it seems like it would just be redundant to carry a fountain pen and wear fountain pen jewelry…overkill even for a serious pen fiend.

If you weren’t carrying your pen and wanted to accessorize with a little statement piece, then it might make sense to wear a necklace or bracelet or pair of earrings with fountain pen flavor. But does a fountain pen nib, or any other part, by itself have enough aesthetic appeal to serve as a piece of jewelry?

I know it’s mostly a matter of personal preference, but I want to hear what you guys think. Would any of you wear pieces like this?

Here’s a little oddity from the web: A perfume called ‘Paper Passion‘ that is designed to smell like the pages of a book.

It comes from Germany as a collaboration between publisher Steidl, perfumer Geza Schoen and Wallpaper* magazine, apparently with a little Karl Lagerfeld thrown in as well.

From Steidl:

This is an opportunity to celebrate all the gloriosensuality of books, at a time when many in the industry are turning against them. The idea is that i[t] should relax you, like when you read a book, to a level of meditation and concentration. Paper Passion has evolved into something quite beautiful and unique. To wear the smell of a book is something very chic. Books are players in the intellectual world, but also in the world of luxury.

It comes in a bottle nestled inside a red-page book and sells for a hefty €85.00.

Designer Schoen told the New York Daily News when the Paper Passion perfume launched that it is a simple, delicate mixture.

Schoen created the perfume with just four or five ingredients, including ethyl linoleate and a selection of woody components to add dryness, although capturing the unique scent was a tricky experience.

“The smell of printed paper is dry and fatty; they are not notes you often work with,” he said.

Fatty?

Reviewers seem to like the scent, although most of them report that it’s very subtle and doesn’t really smell all that much like a book.

Anyone here tried it…or want to?

Readers, I have to confess: Sometimes, I get jealous of you.

The Pen Warrior always come up with such great prize packages for you guys, and this month is no different.

The prize this time is a full set of 18 Stabilo Be Wild writers. Be Wild is a limited-edition range of popular Stabilo ballpoints, rollerballs and highlighters in bright animal prints. Some of them even come with tassels and beads.

They’re great for a little fun doodling or to give as a gift to young writers.

To enter, leave a comment below. The contest is open until 11:59 p.m. (EST) April 13. Please, only one entry per person.

The randomly selected winner will be announced April 15.

Good luck!