From boring office supply to ‘kawaii’ accessories – Here is a how to make DIY cute pencils with adorable pencil toppers!

If you like kawaii things, you might have heard about the global DIY trend of “cutifying” items.

Cutifying simply means taking something plain and making it look cuter. It’s rather popular amongst Kawaii-lovers, who thrive to replace all of their everyday belongings with kawaii delights.

Another benefit of owning cute items is that they make wonderful props for photos, whether it’s product images or lifestyle shots.

To make this DIY cute pencils, I used one of my own vector sets that I sell on stock photography websites. It includes the ultimate elements for a kawaii craft: unicorns, cupcakes and rainbows.

I took some of the illustrations and modified them to fit as cute pencil toppers:

And, I prepared a free printable PDF for you, too, with all the graphics of the pencil toppers ready in it.

How to Make DIY Cute Pencils – Easy Step-by-Step Tutorial

You will need:
• A printout of the printable PDF with the pencil toppers
• Plain pencils
• Scissors
• Paint
• Brush
• Clear transparency film / lamination sheet / Clear plastic package that you can cut

1. First, I painted my pencils with acrylic paint. I stuck them into a foam brick to let them dry. You can coat the dry pencils with a layer of Mod Podge to give them shine and extra durability, but it’s not a must.

2. Some of my pencils received little white dots, which I painted with a thin, pointy brush.

3. I cut the pencil toppers from the printable file and pasted them onto the transparency film. Then I pasted another transparency sheet to their back sides.

It’s important to use stick glue and not runny glue, so that the paper doesn’t get wet and wrinkly.

You can also laminate the printed page with a lamination machine, if you own one.

4. I cut out the film-coated pencil toppers, leaving a little bit of white margins.

5. I Attached the pencil toppers to the pencils with tape.

6. The graphics can work as decorations for other items too, such as paper clips:

Did you like this tutorial? If you did, feel free to share in on Pinterest, and if you made your own DIY cute pencils be sure to click “tried it” so I can see how it went. Thanks! 🙂