It’s that time again… time for back to school shopping. All students deserve the best supplies to do their best work. At our Pencils.com Store you can find all kinds of exciting new pencils and accessories to start the school year off right. Fun supplies can make the excitement of the first day linger throughout the entire school year.

Check out our school planners for those busy elementary or middle school students. They will help your students keep track of homework, practices, appointments, and field trips so you’re always prepared and never miss a due date.

Our new Smencils are available in #2 graphite or colored pencils that are scented with 10 different flavors and made from recycled paper. Students can show them off to their friends and give math class that extra smell of excitement.

Teachers, start preparing your classroom with rewarding and motivational pencils, like Student of the Week, Perfect Attendance, Happy Birthday, and Do Your Best on the Test pencils.

ForestChoice and Golden Bear brand pencils offer high quality Incense-cedari options with the added benefit of their respective Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)& Pencil Makers Association (PMA seal) third party certifications indicating that the wood comes from well managed forests and the pencils meet strictest consumer safety standards as established and monitored by the PMA.
Golden Bear Pencils

Principals and administrators may be interested boosting school spirit with Custom Imprint Pencils. You can have your school name and mascot printed in your school colors on a variety of pencils to sell at fundraisers or give out at special events. Discount pricing for custom imprint items is automatically calculated within the shopping cart and checkout pages as you increase your purchase quantities from 5 gross up to 100+ gross (minimum purchase 3 gross = 3 boxes = 432 pencils).

For the more budget conscious we have our Prospector & Spangle coloring and decorative Spangle theme pencils which offer safe, affordable pencils that perform well at our best values.
Prospector Pencils

As with custom imprint pencils all items available on the Pencils.com store offer quantity discounts which can be seen via the shopping cart and checkout pages. Also whenever you buy pencils at Pencils.com you earn Pencil Points for added discount redemptions on future purchases. We are currently working to complete the pencil points redemption capability on the store site so that you can take advantage of any pencil points you may have already earned through prior purchases or participation on the Pencils.com website. Remember that sharing your drawings, journal writing, adding to our lesson plans or links or contributing in many other ways to our growing pencil community earn you pencil points.

I ran into this blog posted by Matthew James Taylor titled "The Art of Sharpening Pencils".It's a helpful resource on sharpening pencils for art purposes. In his post, he describes several pencil points he likes to use for different types of drawing. The image below is one Matthew claims to have created himself called the Bullet Point which he uses to make both soft and sharp lines.

Bullet Point

For those of you who may not be quite as adept with using a knife to sharpen your pencil, I have determined that a similar effect can be gained by using our Palomino-KUM Long Point Sharpener. Here are the steps:

1. Use the #1 hole to remove the wood leaving your unsharpened graphitei core exposed as usual.

2. Partially insert the pencil point into the #2 hole (note: works best if you insert just a bit short of where the screw holds the blade to the sharpener body or about 1/3 of the distance into the sharpener).

3. Angle the pencil at a greater angle resting the wooden cone on the bottom of the pencil hole until the graphite tip is up against the sharpening blade.

4. Lightly turn the pencil a few turns while keeping the angle and pressure constant so that you can re-create the Bullet point on the end of the flatter graphite point. (note: gentle action and a steady hand is required here, but you need to be a bit careful about breaking your point.)

Of course most pencil art books suggest use of a knife rather than a sharpener for creating various pencil points used for different drawing techniques. Derwent has a general guideline page on their website titled "How to Sharpen"which gives various options and how to know when your sharpener blade is dull.

NOTE: Matthew is also the creator of the Graeme Frontbum's Pet World Cartoon Stripand campaign manager for the Graeme Frontbum for President of the Internetcampaign.

Cate School's annual Camp Cate celebration holding reunions with school alumni and thier families participated in Drawing Day 2008on Saturday, June 7. Drawings from children and alumni participants can be seen by scrolling through the Camp Cate 2008 gallery here.

Pencils.com contributed a selection of California Republic's Palomino premium artist range pencils and Spangle coloring pencils for drawing events held for the children around the campus. Pencils.com looks forward to exploring collaboration opportunities with Cate's Arts programin the future.

Learn how pencils are made here.

Drawing Day 2008 is an exciting new effort to support online art and Pencils.com is proud to participate. Help us and other supporters reach the goal of 1 million drawings uploaded on the internet on June 7th. In the site's own words:

Drawing Day is a worldwide drawing event encouraging everyone to drop everything and draw for the sake of art. The internet is an open canvas. Help us create 1 million drawings online this day and boost online art communities.

To get started join Pencils.com today for free gallery and image hosting for your pencil drawings. Then add one or more new image galleries and share images to get started uploading.

Here's a fun video to help inspire you.

It seems after two months the 150th Anniversary of Hymen Lipman's patent on an eraser tipping concept for pencils continues to generate interest in writing about the continued survival of the pencil in today's high tech world.

Here is today's Chicago Tribune article titled "Lowly pencil still the write tool" in which I am quoted on this topic. It seems these newspaper writers are always mystified that the wood cased pencil has not gone the way of the dinosaur with the development of so many new communication tools. We all know better, that it's not the sexy, newness of the writing tool that matters most, but the tactile feeling of making your graphitei mark on paper that keeps us coming back for more. Of course the comparatively low cost of pencils versus other writing alternatives is certainly a big help too.

The longevity of the wood cased pencil was also the theme of one our our prior Incense Cedari Institute Pencil Doodle Contests titled "The #2 Pencil, Still #1 in a High Tech World". We will scan and upload the winners from this particular contest to our Doodle Contest archives. I recall the children were quite inventive in their themes for these drawings.