March is a very busy card month in our family. There many joyous occasions like birthdays, anniversaries and this year; Easter. I love sending and receiving special occasion cards and want to pass this love on to my teen daughters, so this weekend I pulled out some cards, our family calendar and a bunch of new Pilot pens I’d received from Shoplet.com to use and share my thoughts here with you. While I did receive complimentary products all opinions, love of a good writing pen and cards are my own.

When talking with my daughters about writing special correspondences, I learned that sometimes it’s the very act of writing, putting pen to card-stock that stalls their creative process and I can understand that. 

Sometimes a pen doesn’t feel right in your hand, or it doesn’t glide across the writing surface, or worse, it leaves blobs of ink behind! I’m happy to report; you’ll find none of those issues with Pilot Pens! If you want your teens to love writing, give them a great pen and these easy to follow steps!

 1. Pick Your Pen by doing a writing test:

We each chose a different type of pen from the very nice collection we’d received. After you pick a pen to try, hand out lined notebook paper to practice writing on first, that way you won’t ever ruin a card again! Don’t worry about what they write now. Just let them choose a pen solely on how it feels and how the ink looks to them. We’ll get to the wording in another step.

We all loved the cool pastel color of the Dr. Grip pen that’s light weight and has a cushioned barrel which feels good in your hand. Personally, I found it to be a little too thick for me, but I know my senior mother in law would love this pen as her hands bother her, so I’m gifting this pen and a set of all occasion cards to her.

My teen daughters preferred the fun and sleek looking Acroball pure white pens with their fine points for their writing styles. Both are right handed with a light grip and so they enjoyed the feel and flow of the ink.

I’m a lefty, who turns her paper and tends to bear down on a pen, so if I’m not using a good pen, I’ll either smudge my previous sentence or find a glob of ink at pause points in my writing. I had no problem at all with the Acroball color medium point pen.

My husband chose the Acroball Pro medium point in blue to sign his card and liked how it felt in his hand and how it didn’t drag on the card stock.  To learn more about any of these pens, just click on their links and you’ll be taken to Shoplet.com where you can find them on sale along with a large variety of office supplies.

2. Let your Teen pick the card:

Whether you buy for one special occasion, or keep an assortment of cards on hand like I do, it’s very important that you let your teen choose the card, not just for the visual aspect, but for the statement inside if any. 

3. Give your Teen Privacy and Time to write:

In other words parents- don’t hover! Nobody likes to write under pressure with somebody watching them, so be patient!  If you want this to be an enjoyable endeavor for your teens and if you want them to ever go beyond a short sentence or two, you must allow time to gather their thoughts and then, allow them to practice writing it out on scratch paper before writing anything on the card.

5. Help your teen address, stamp and mail their cards:

My girls have seen me do this countless times in their lives, so they can do this step on their own. The very best way to make it second nature is to let them take the lead. Give them your address book for cards going to family friends and relatives, or help them look up a friends address with the old school way with the phone book or their preferred way, Google it.  Allow them artistic freedom here as well. If they want to use print instead of cursive writing on the envelope, let them.  It’s their mail to personalize how they choose. 

With a good pen, a nice card and a healthy dose of patience and understanding from us, we can instill a love of writing not only cards, but other correspondence that will serve our teens well from middle school and beyond!

Comments Please:

Do you send out special occasion cards often? 

As any small business owner will attest, keeping track of all the moving parts of a business can be daunting. As a WAHM with two small businesses to manage, I’m here to tell you that the most valued tool in my home office is a working pen. Yes, the lowly, highly under-rated and often sought after pen. 

When Shoplet.com sent out an email to their review bloggers asking if we’d like to receive a complimentary set of Pilot pens and highlighters to review, I think I broke some sort of response speed record letting them know I’d be happy to share my thoughts on the new Pilot products. All opinions and doodles shared below are completely my own.

Pens and highlighters are essential tools in any office or home, but my stash seems to dwindle as family members pick them up and forget to return them. Now that I’ve handed each person living here a brand new Pilot B2P pen, I’m hopeful my pens will stay on my desk and kitchen message station. 

We received these Pilot products:

I love all the Pilot products sent to me. I have fun writing my daughters notes using the various colored pens and erasable highlighter, but my favorite pen of all has got to be the Frixion clicker erasable gel pen !

I love how smoothly this pen glides over the paper. I love the feel of it in my hand. I love that the ink dries quickly so I don’t make smudges as I write.  This is a very important feature for a leftie! And I love that if I do make a mistake, I can simply erase it without ripping the paper.

Well done Pilot!

If you need to re-stock your pen supply, I invite you to head on over to Shoplet.com and check out their office supplies and other promotional items they offer. You can learn more about each type of Pilot pen by clicking on their linked names above.