I made this tray as an alternative to the typical accordion tray, it takes up less space per pencil.
We all just need 1M cubic feet of whatever the backing is Eclectic uses in her photos on Mercari.
Do you have an example of one of those listings?
Ugh. No open Mercari tabs and now can’t find the f*cking category…
Update: No wonder, they removed the Writing Instruments category! It’s all under Notebook now. This means your daily searches will now take even longer than before
And with Mercari’s limit of 100 search pages, you will likely only see the last 10–16 hours of listings (instead of 24–30).
I hate when tech moves us further away from our goals.
- You’ve definitely seen this seller on Mercari and eBay
- All listings sit atop gray, corrugated cardboard that looks perfect for displaying writing instruments
- Pencils are always oriented vertically in the center of the image
- All photos are watermarked
- Her prices usually tend to be at least 15% higher than established market value, but she also generally has really nice pieces
I’ll update this post if I can find a link to one of her listings.
Had her name wrong the first time. Hopefully didn’t throw you off the scent—it’s Eclectic (not Eccentric)
Interesting approach. I like this idea of scoring the cardboard and then bending, in such a way that leaves a little space where a cardboard “support” can be inserted for rigidity.
I imagine that once you cut one to fit a drawer you’ve dedicated for writing instruments, you could hit the cardboard with an enamel paint followed by a clearcoat. And that would protect against superficial moisture damage.
Yeah, I thought about spraying acrylic resin with an air compressor, might that work?
I don’t think you need to go so far as to use an air compressor. Probably just a spray-can paint product.
Are those Penn State? How easy are they to cut in half hotdog style? I got ideas brewing.
They certainly look like the Penn State ones. Those are pretty easy to cut with scissors or a blade.
The material I’m thinking of has much tighter corrugation with less channel depth. It’s certainly not a pen tray.
Getting closer, but the backing Eclectic uses appears to be Japanese stationery that requires no alternations or modifications for use. It’s just a heavy stock that’s corrugated and firm enough to support pens or pencils in extremely close positions (for optimized display).
Here’s a link to her Mercari page.
Kinda like she is using a single face corrugated sheet similar to ones sold at hobby lobby. I like this roll of A (1/4”) fluted packing as well. The big difference for me between the two is the extra strip of paper backing on the roll that is not there on most sheets.
Looks good, this one seems stackable to me.
I bought the stuff at Hobby Lobby, and it was super shitty. Looks like a massive quality difference between HL and Eclectic’s backing.