Pentel Pencil and Pens Product Review for Shoplet

Pens and pencils are a hot commodity in my house. With three school aged kids they go fast!  I received an eight pack of Pentel Vicuna retractable ball point pens, a Pentel Twist Erase III mechanical pencil, and Pentel EnerGel Alloy RT Roller Ball retractable ball point pen; to test out and review on my blog.

I fell in love with the EnerGel pen!  It is so smooth and writes cleanly, plus it feels good when holding it.  It is a bit heavier than most pens and feels good to hold and you can refill the ink! I immediately began using it as my work pen.  I let someone use it to sign a form and she commented on how nice it wrote. That is pretty unusual as far as I know.  I let my oldest draw some pictures with each of the Pentel writing utensils we are testing so you can see the quality.

The Pentel Twist-Erase III Mechanical pencil is nice also. The thing that mades this unique is the eraser gets longer when you twist the end of the pencil (thus the name.)  It even came with an extra eraser!  This pencil also has a latex-free grip, which is nice because both my husband and youngest daughter are allergic to latex.

The last, and most fun, of the writing instruments are the Vicuna pens.  The pack comes with eight different colors.  I have always loved using colorful ink for writing, in junior high and high school I used colorful ink AND colorful paper!  I'm sure my teachers loved it!  I use these pens for signing my kids papers for school, making lists, and pretty much anything that strikes my fancy.  I am having to fight my kids to keep them.

None of these pens are really meant for drawing, but I love my daughter's art!  I'm so glad she found the time to do some doodles for my post!  You can find all of these wonderful Pentel products at Shoplet.

I received these items at no charge in exchange for my honest review, all opinions are my own.

Fun Homemade Valentines

Valentine's Day is just about 10 days away.  Do you have kids that exchange valentines at school?  My two youngest kids are in elementary school, so they both exchange valentines with classmates.  We are required to give one to each kid.  I don't mind that. But, this year I'm pretty sure my son is going to give me a hard time with that.  You see, he and his best friend have been having some issues with one of their classmates.  Never the less, we will do a valentine for each child.

A few years ago we made these cute "Love Bug" valentines for my son's class.  This was before my youngest daughter was in school.

 I bought a 24 pack of mini canvass, a red ink pad, and black permanent marker.  We started by making the bugs with 2 thumb prints, we did that on all of the valentines and waited for them to dry.   Then we drew little antenna and faces on each bug.  Once that was dry my son wrote his name on each one.  They were a big hit!

Last year one of my friends posted a craft idea for heart shaped crayons that she was doing for her son's preschool class.  I loved it! You can see that here.  I went in search of molds that I could use to make my own.  I couldn't find anything like it, but got a chocolate silicone mold that was really pretty.  I just put broken crayons in various colors in each mold.  I heated them up in the microwave because of the fact that my mold was silicone.  I kept checking on them at minute increments.  I used tooth pick to pop any bubbles that came up.

I love the pattern!

This is what they look like at the back.

I added these crayons to goodie bags for both of my youngest kids'  classes since I didn't think they would stick to a valentine.

My question to you is.. Do you have a fun valentine idea?  Share with me, since I'm not sure what to do this year.