Roll out a sheet of clay on #1 on the pasta machine, and lay the pen on it.

Roll the clay onto the pen to cover it, blending the edges of the clay seam together gently with finger.

Trim off the ends flush with the black tip, and cover the other end totally.

Roll 2 more sheets of clay through the pasta machine.

The 2nd layer on #3,

the 3rd layer on #4.

The 2nd layer would go about 2/3 of the way down the pen, and the 3rd layer would go down about 1/3 of the way.

Roll onto pen as you did the first layer of clay and smooth.

(You don't need to have as many layers as I had, then the pen wouldn't be as thick. I used all #1 thickness for my fat pens.)

I added scraps of canes to one of the pens, and smoothed them into the base layer.

One of them I added some texture to it with a stick.

Bake at the recommended tempurature for 30 minutes. Cool.

When pen is cool, rub acrylic paint into the crevices if you've textured it.

Then use wet/dry sandpaper to sand off the excess paint, and buff it to a nice

sheen. I used a buffing wheel, but you could use material such as jeans to buff on.

For the stands, re-insert the ink cartridge into the barrel, and put some

cornstarch on the end of the pen tip. Roll a pretty large ball of clay with

the same decorations on it as the pen, and flatten it on one side the table.

Take the pen and stick the point into the clay, deep enough to get a good

hold, but not down to the table so as to puncture the other side of the stand.

Remove the pen (but don't rock it as that will stretch the hole and your pen

will wobble) and bake the stand.

I haven't had any problems with leaking cartridges or melting pens. Some

people say to put a tiny hole in the pen barrel before baking to keep the

cartridge from leaking. I haven't tried this.

I would like to include that I got my original instructions from and article

in Arts & Crafts magazine, Sept/Oct 1997, by Donna Kato. She has some

beautiful work!

Good luck all! It's a lot of fun!

Karen Abbo