House pen holder / house planter

A simple and fun project today – these little house pen holders / house planters are made up of 5 pieces of scrap wood and a bit of glue. You can whip them up in minutes and create adorable decor for your office, shelves and/or window sills.

I cut a couple of these house pen holders for my friend Char before Christmas. She wanted to give her Dad something for his desk at work so that he’d think of her while there. I cut the pieces and then she glued and painted them up and they were adorable… so adorable, I had to share a blog post today on how to make your own.

I had some spare time between projects at cabinet-making school so I grabbed some scrap ¼” MDF (with melamine on one side) and cut:

(1) 3″ x 3″ square

(2) 3″ x 3 ½” pieces

(2) 3 ½” x 5 ¼” pieces (with a 45° angled roof on the top)

I thought it would be tidier to have the melamine on the inside of my little house pen holders, but learned the hard way that melamine won’t glue to melamine when I picked them up and crushed them with one hand. 🤦🏻‍♀️

It’s okay, I learn something with every single thing I make so this was an easily rectified lesson.

I sanded off the glue residue and then re-glued my parts together with MDF against MDF and the sanded melamine on the outside.

I used masking tape at the seams to hold them together while the glue dried.

The next day I did the crush test again, and nothing short of a hammer will break them now.

A bit of latex paint to colour my row houses and a few bits of black adhesive vinyl (although a sharpie will work just as well) to make windows and doors.

I guess I should have made one house pen holder a bit taller than the others for interest, but then pens would get lost and you’d have to fish for them.

It was taking this photo that I realized how cute these would be holding little plants in them. With MDF you can’t actually plant soil inside or the MDF will warp immediately, but you can drop a small plant pot inside, or do what I did and add faux succulents instead.