I'm certainly no stranger to getting sucked into unexpected projects that turn into rabbit holes, but this one was one of the weirder ones.
I have been keeping a planner/journal/log for quite a while now. I originally started trying to keep one back in 2023, but have struggled to keep using it on a daily basis. I'll probably write another post some other time about how I use the planner/journal/log, but for now the only important thing to know is that I keep it with me almost everywhere I go and I use many different colors of pens to fill it out.
Because I have so many pens, I wanted to have a pen holder that I could keep them in. When I first started, I got a pack of pens in assorted colors and kept them in the container they came in. That worked pretty good for a while, but as I kept expanding the planner I needed to add more colors of pens. So, I began my search for a pen holder with very specific, but not overly crazy in my opinion, requirements:
- Must hold more than 10 pens
- Must have individual slots for each pen (I don't want to rummage around a pouch every time I need a specific color)
- Must open and close like a book
- Must not use a zipper to stay closed (this was where the majority of pen holders failed. So many use zippers, but that is just one more hurdle that I would need to get past every time I wanted to write something, and for my personality I need to remove every possible hurdles in order to give me the best chance of continuing to use it.)
- Preferred to use an elastic strap to hold closed
- Preferred to actually look like a book, because I think that would be neat
Overall, I don't think that's a crazy list. Though apparently it's a pretty crazy concept to not want my pen case to have a zipper. Seriously, so many zippers.
I spent at least two weeks searching all over amazon and the internet trying to find something that was close. I even used AI chatbots to try and find something, and they kept telling me they had found something that met my requirements exactly, but it would have a zipper, or be a pouch without individual slots, or something else obviously wrong. Seriously, AI chatbots are so dumb, maybe I'll make a post in the future about them and what I actually use them for, because I do actually use them quite a bit lately.
The only thing I found that was even remotely close was a massive leather pouch that was designed for people to hold their fountain pen collections. The slots were way too big for my ball point pens and the thing cost almost a hundred dollars. Ridiculous. I have a very specific pen that I use and it's my favorite pen. Here's a link to them if you're looking for a new pen. It's not sponsored or affiliated or anything like that, just a really great product that I genuinely use every day and think other people would enjoy if they like pens.
When I finally gave up and decided the product simply didn't exist, I ventured to make my own. I started with designing the holder itself that looked like that pages of a book and held my pens specifically that I could print on my 3d printer. In the size I was going for I was able to fit 18 pens, which was awesome. If I were to remake it I would design it so it didn't have to be printed in two pieces, because gluing it together was a real pain.
After using that on its own for a week or so to make sure that it was going to work for me and my process, I started making the case for it. Like I said in my original requirements, I wanted it to look like a book and close with an elastic strap. So, I had to learn how to make custom hard covers for books and bind a book inside. Overall, it was relatively simple, but time consuming. I finished this back in early January and it's still really holding up well. One of my friends at work told me that I should sell these on Etsy, let me know if you agree.
Thanks for reading. Tyler
p.s. there is a gallery of photos down below. This post was partially intended for me to test the new feature of my website to add pictures in the middle of a post and a gallery at the end. Overall it worked, but I might need to include the gallery in a different way because it looks kind of weird being so far down the page.
If you enjoyed this post or wanted to talk to me about this post, feel free to email me, tylerjpurvis@gmail.com.
