Most Cheerful Colored Pencils Ever

Pencils by Otomo Design Studio

As you saw from yesterday’s post, after our long, dark, cold winter, the sakura are finally blooming! It’s a good time to show you the most cheerful set of colored pencils in my collection: flower pencils made by Otomo Design Studio.

The box is an elegant pentagonal shape of quintessential Japanese design, and inside are five unique pencils. According to Spoon & Tamago, “made at an environmentally-conscious factory in Japan, the pencils are manufactured from a process that eliminates resource waste.” The barrels are made from recycled paper.

The transparent box ends reveal why these pencils are special. Their ends are shaped like a bellflower, evergreen tree, dandelion, plum blossom and cherry blossom.

Even the empty box is unique: Transparent dividers that keep the pencils in place turn the box into a kaleidoscope!

Softer and containing more pigment than I would have expected for novelty pencils, they have ridgy barrels that are not exactly comfortable to hold.

The uniquely ridgy barrels, however, are what make the pencils so much fun to sharpen. Using the sharpener that came with the pencils to accommodate the large barrels, I made a colorful pile of shavings that look like the petals of the flowers and the tree.

These delightful pencils were a gift from a friend who knows what makes a colored pencil geek happy!