Yes, I know. The schools went back weeks ago. All over the world children had their first day of school or returned after the summer break in late August and early September. My eldest happily headed off on the first day back as if he hadn’t been off at all. The following day Number Two began his school adventure.

The night before his first day, I was frantically trying to make the kitchen look celebratory. Somewhere (probably Pinterest) I saw a garland of paper pencils and decided to give them a go, as you do at 11pm when you need to have your wits about you the next morning. It was really quick and easy to do, so I thought I would share it with you.

Please forgive the quality of the photos. As I said, this was a spur of the moment project late at night.

You will need:

Card in various colours. At a minimum you will need the colour of the pencil and yellow or light brown for the wood.

Glue stick

A ruler

A pencil

Scissors or a paper cutter / guillotine

I made all the pencils the same colour, red. For a better effect, make different colours of pencil, like you would get in a pack of colouring pencils.

Begin by cutting strips of card in the colours you want to use for the pencil. Per pencil, cut out a rectangle 10 cm x 25 cm of coloured card.

Next you need to cut out a rectangle of the wood-coloured card (yellow or light brown) measuring 5 cm x 10 cm. You will need one per pencil.

Glue one wood-coloured rectangle 2 cm from one of the short edges of the coloured paper. Repeat with the remaining strips of coloured card and rectangles of wood-coloured card.

To make the tip of the pencil, mark the centre of the short end of the card. Using a ruler and pencil, draw a line from the centre point to the spot where the wood-coloured card meets the coloured card (see photo above). Repeat from the centre point to the opposide edge.

Do this will each of the strips of card until you end up with a set of pencils.

While I got the idea from a garland, I didn’t make a garland, just the paper pencils, which I used to decorate the breakfast table.

I can imagine this working well as a decoration in a classroom or for name cards for desks, as well as for a first day of school decoration.