Longhand Pencils business aims to capture nostalgia with bespoke pop culture writing sets

After Kasee Baldwin gave birth to her second set of twins, she needed to find something that was just for her. Through this search, her business Longhand Pencils was born.

“It honestly goes back to when I was a kid and I would get those fun little trinkets from Scholastic book fairs and the smelly pencils and the funny shaped erasers and all of that,” she said. “I just wanted to, I don’t know, recapture that joy of nostalgia from youth and using a pencil.”

Longhand Pencils has a robust social media presence and is most well known among fans for selling color-coordinated pencil sets with quotes from TV shows, movies and books — or as Baldwin puts it, “all the things that we love to hyper fixate on.”

Baldwin stamps every single pencil she sells herself.

“I have a foil stamping machine,” she said. “It heats up and you use different colored foils and you put them directly onto a pencil. So there’s like a pencil jig that you put the pencil into, it sits in there. You put the foil on top and you pull down a lever onto the pencil. So every single pencil that I stamp is hand-stamped one by one.”

Baldwin, who has sold countless pencils since her business started six years ago, said it’s too hard to pick her favorite set. But the sets with quotes from the movie “You’ve Got Mail” and the romance novel “Red, White & Royal Blue” by Casey McQuiston stick out in her mind as being particularly popular.

The “You’ve Got Mail” set includes the quotes “I wanted it to be you,” “that caviar is a garnish!” and “Patricia makes coffee nervous.”

But the sets Baldwin has enjoyed making the most?

“Probably Mary-Kate and Ashley, because Mary-Kate and Ashley raised me. Those movies were my life growing up,” she said. “And I think also another set I’ve loved is Sarah Dessen because, again, her books were really important to me growing up and still are.”

Baldwin said one of the hardest parts is picking the quotes she’s going to use on the pencils – but it’s also the most fun.

“I just wanted to, I don’t know, recapture that joy of nostalgia from youth and using a pencil,” Baldwin says.
Photo by Jessica Murray

“I take a lot of suggestions. I have a forum on my website where people can suggest what they want. And sometimes I’ll ask on social media,” she said. “I’m kind of trying to keep my finger on the pulse of what people like.”

» GET MORE NEWS FROM AROUND THE STATE: Sign up for Texas Standard’s weekly newsletters

At the end of the day, Baldwin said she hopes her pencils help people connect – or reconnect – with the pop culture that means the most to them.

“As a society, hopefully we’re moving more toward embracing the cringe, and just liking what you like, and going back to what you loved as a child,” she said. “I hope that my business can allow people to have that space to find joy and the things that they love.”

If you found the reporting above valuable, please consider making a donation to support it here. Your gift helps pay for everything you find on texasstandard.org and KUT.org. Thanks for donating today.