Pen Mail Box 2.0 Made Possible by Hanna

Pen Covered Mail Box 2.0 in the making
Pen Covered Mail Box 2.0 in the making

Pen Covered Mail Box 2.0 ready to receive mail
Pen Covered Mail Box 2.0 ready to receive mail

Last Sunday during the making of the Pen Guy documentary we shot the creation of the pen covered mail box version 2.0. Paul filmed me in my workshop opening up my mail, taken the pens out and covering this mail box with donated pens. I was also filmed picking up this box of pens at the Forestville post office.
The used pens were donated by Hanna F. and sent in from Washington DC who also said in a note:

“Enjoy the pens! I hope they live on in an awesome art project”. – Hannah

Thank you Hanna, your pens will live on my new pen covered mail box for a long time. And it will make my mail man and my neighbors smile come rain or shine.

4 Steps to prepping the Mercedes Pens for a movie shoot

Do you ever wonder what its like over here at the Pen Guy house with all the donated pens I have been collecting locally and through the mail? Well here are the exclusive, never before seen pictures of my front yard totally covered in pens ready to sorting for my big roof project.

You start out with all the old pens out in the open ready for sorting.
A ton of pens all over the sidewalk

Then you start sorting the crayola markers by color in bundles.
Crayola markers sorted by color

Then you prep the roof with drain pipe glued on with silicone.
Drain pipe tubes glued on the Mercedes Pens roof

Then you shove all the crayola marker bundles in the tubes and pray to God they don’t fly off the roof while your driving down the highway at a whopping 65mph.
Crayola markers on the roof of the Mercedes Pens arranged by color

It took me about a week to scrape and prep the roof and another week to short and glue the new pens on. All this to get the Mercedes Pens ready for filming on the new movie called Doggie Boogie in San Francisco. I got one more day of shooting next week so all I have to do do is show up with the car just as it was last week.

Pen Rainbow Inside the Mercedes Pens on the way to Art Car Fest

Pen Rainbow Inside the Mercedes Pens
Its nice to finally have enough pens collected to be able to create an entire pen rainbow on the inside of Mercedes Pens Art Car roof. I just finished this beauty yesterday and with a colorful interior like mine, a rainbow seemed like the right thing to do. The inside is the safest place to do this considering the sun and weather eventually destroy all pens on the outside of the pen car. I know its a weird shape but I still have more space to fill out the area around it with more pens. I have less than a month to get ready for the big art car event called Art Car Fest September 25-27th, so I need to get busy repairing the missing and damaged pens. Art Car Fest is three days of hanging out with other art car folks showing our creations to the public. I will also be collecting old pens so if you have them please fill free to come and drop them off, I would love take them off your hands. Think of all the free space you’ll have for more stuff.

This year you will be able to enjoy art cars at Art Car Fest at these locations:

Day 1 – Friday, September 25th

Day 2 – Saturday, September 26th

Day 3 – Sunday, September 27th

Pen Guy makes it on the Smithsothian Blog

Girl in her toy pen car
My youngest daughter gets her very own Pen Ride

Wow how cool is that, I made it on the Smithosian Channel with a great article called Recycle Your Pens by Andrea Michnik. Great Job!!I have been taking it easy lately but have continued to collect pens often wondering what the next step will be. Just today I got charged up again and determined in my mind that I needed to get a hold of more pens. The funny thing is that this article came out for the world to see and know that I am man on the hunt for the worlds supply of old pens. Funny how things work out for good in the grand scheme of things.

I don’t know why I got in my head to do this and put it out there, but sometimes you have to follow that inspiring dream and not worry about the how. The journey is much more important than the end result and so far this journey has been amazing. I have met so many people who I would never had met if not been for the Mercedes Pens Art Car.

The only real plan for now is to just keep going, collecting and going after my dream. I do need all the help I can get and that is why I need you out there to collect and send in those pens. At some point I will need building space to house all these pens, to sort and begin the process of transforming these old pens into art and other useful stuff. I will need supplies, expertise, funds and a vast network of people who have caught the vision and want to be a part of something really big and at the very least, a pretty darn interesting experiment.