pop culture pencils

There's nothing better than a good pencil. Sounds stupid, but a bad pencil, can be a horrible and irritating object to use. Scratchy leads that you can feel juddering across the page and ones that have broken down the entire length of the pencil and continuously snap as you're sharpening them... a lot of pencils are truly horrible. I could show you... there's a lot of cheap HB's* festering in my pencil pot alongside the better quality H to B drawing pencils I collected during uni, and the bendy** pencils I recently bought on a nostalgia trip.

Honestly, I'm a pen girl, for both writing and drawing and always in black ink. So I rarely use pencils these days, unless it's either handy or for preparatory sketching. But I remember kids in school with their names printed on their pencils. Where they were getting these mysteriously personalised pencils from, before the days of internet shopping, is beyond me, but you'd trump them with these telly inspired beauties.

Sarah Graham, founder of the Glasgow based La La Land and creator of Pop Culture Pencils, hand-stamps each of her pencils. Emblazoning them, not with kids names - though seeing you can have a thirty character long custom set made for a little extra money, your name is not a lost concept - instead, the length of the pencil is stamped and foiled with quotes and catchphrases from your favourite telly shows and films. These include, The Might Boosh "Stop tugging me mink!"; Community "Cool, cool cool cool"; The Thick Of It, "Come the fuck in or fuck the fuck off" and a new addition, from Adventure Time "Oh My Glob!". Along with many others from a lot of the shows I watch and films I love.

La La Land is also the originator of the Celebrity Wife Pencil Set, so your pencils can pledge your love as Mrs Benedict Cumberbatch; Mrs Ryan Gosling; Mrs Jamie Dornan or Mrs Alexander Skarsgard.

Not sure I'm going to buy those ones, but my lovely sisters bought me the IT Crowd set for Christmas. They're still in the Pop Culture packaging and I have a look at them every time "I'm in an ethical pickle."  Pretty sure there will be a few more sets in my pen pot in the future and I hope they're in yours too.


* Pencils are graded H to B, as I'm sure you know, H standing for Hardness and B Blackness. Ranging in most brands from 9H to 9B with HB, your traditional school writing pencil, almost slap bang in the middle. 9H being the hardest and resulting in very light markings, 9B being softest and giving the darkest markings. There is one aberration to this grading system, F, which sits between HB and H and while it mythically represents Fineness, there's conflicted opinions on whether it sharpens any finer than those which flank it.

** BIC Evolutions are recycled wood free pencils which when I was a kid, I loved because they were bendy, they sharpened nicely and were a nice aqua colour. I was easily swayed by anything that wasn't your traditional black and yellow or black and red stripe.


Link | Pop Culture Pencils on La La Land
Link | Pop Culture Pencils on Etsy
Link | La La Land Blog
Link | What Would Buffy Do? Pencil Set from Pop Culture Pencils on La La Land
Link | Princess Bride Pencil Set from Pop Culture Pencils on La La Land
Link | Muppet Christmas Carol: Rizzo The Rat Pencil Set from Pop Culture Pencils on La La Land
Link | Adventure Time: Oh My Glob Pencil Set from Pop Culture Pencils on La La Land
Link | Malcolm Tucker The Thick of It Pencil Set from Pop Culture Pencils on La La Land
Link | The Mighty Boosh Pencil Set from Pop Culture Pencils on La La Land
Link | Community Pencil Set from Pop Culture Pencils on La La Land
Link | The IT Crowd Pencil Set from Pop Culture Pencils on La La Land
Link | Spaced Pencil Set from Pop Culture Pencils on La La Land
Link | Parks and Recreation Pencil Set from Pop Culture Pencils on La La Land

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Listening: The Riverboat Song - Ocean Colour Scene