Looking for the bastard lovechild of your office pen holder and the Barbie Party Palace

May 3, 2011 5:20 AM

I am looking for a pink castle-shaped pen holder. It should be suitable to hold the kind of stationary your average office worker needs. Glitter and fur a bonus. Must be from some where that delivers to the UK.

My friend wants some thing like this, but pink and castle-shaped. Surely someone makes this?

Preferably, it should be not overtly branded with some Disney princess or similar.

Pink and/or sparkly but not castle-shaped will also be considered.

I have already seen this Diddlina Fairytale castle pen holder, and it’s just not quite right, but it is Plan B if you guys can’t turn up anything.

Yes, this is for a grown adult to use in a 'professional' office. You will all make a girl very happy.

posted by Helga-woo to shopping (8 answers total)

I can't see the link you provided (Uk specific I think), but perhaps Etsy?
posted by backwards guitar at 5:49 AM on May 3, 2011

Maybe you could make one?
posted by greenfelttip at 6:38 AM on May 3, 2011

I'm wondering if search terms would help. I played around with your search and discovered that on the open internet, using the term "castle desk set" returned the most similar items, including an ebay seller who sells vintage Bobby and Kate pink castle desk sets that you might want to contact. Also "princess desk set" was useful. I got enough returns of different kinds of items that I'm not going to link here, just let you explore to see if something fits.

On etsy, the preferred term seems to be "desk organizer" and there are LOTS of sellers making all different items here--I was able to return items closer to your description by including "fake fur desk organizer" and "glitter" and/or "pink" organizer. It looks like asking a seller for a custom would be very possible for a reasonable price.

Also, I was able to get some ideas using "castle pencil holder" "castle pen holder" and, alternately, "pink" pen/pencil holder.

Sorry for the lack of links--I got lots of different kinds of results of what you may be looking for, so it seemed simpler to give you a method for how I was getting them. In the US, "desk set" and and "desk organizer" are preferred terms, it seems--in UK "desk tidy."
posted by rumposinc at 6:57 AM on May 3, 2011

PS

I also got some promising hits using "desk caddy" along with pink/glitter/castle/princess. Also, weirdly, some things that might work adding "breast cancer awareness" to any of the other terms for this kind of item--a lot of companies pink-afy their wares, giving some proceeds to breast cancer.
posted by rumposinc at 7:09 AM on May 3, 2011

You could try decorating one of these, perhaps?
posted by pocketfluff at 10:08 AM on May 3, 2011

I may have found the perfect product - but it's in Australia. Perhaps the site selling it could help you, though?
posted by jeri at 1:03 AM on May 4, 2011

Oh, and here it is at another site - also in Australia.
posted by jeri at 1:09 AM on May 4, 2011

You're right jeri, that is perfect. But I'm not sure I can stretch to the cost of shipping.

Lots of googling later - thank you for suggestions for search terms, that helped - and I have come to the conclusion that the perfect pink sparkly castle pen holder is not available in the UK.

This disapoints me. I firmly believe that something must be wrong with our so-called 'consurmerist' culture, if no stationary designer has looked at a pen holder and thought "Hmm, that looks a bit like a castle. I know, let's make one that is a castle! And let's make it pink! With glitter!"

I am pretty crafty, so when I looked on Etsy and Folksy, anything remotely suitable just made me think "I could do that" (a frequent problem I have there). Also I have a degree in castles. In fact, I came to the realisation that I am perhaps uniquely qualified to do this myself. So I have cleared my diary this weekend and I am going to make the perfect pink sparkly castle pen holder.
posted by Helga-woo at 6:03 AM on May 6, 2011