We've all used ballpoint pens before. Handy, cheap, and easy to obtain the humble ballpoint pen is one of our most popular plastic promotional pens. But have you ever wondered exactly how much bang you get for your buck? Do ballpoint pens actually last for a considerable amount of writing time, or do they just say that. One Japanese artist decided to find out -- and the results may surprise you!

Long-Lasting Budget Personalised Pens

Standard ballpoint pens usually advertise their writing range in the number of kilometres their ink can last for. Our range of customised BiC pens, for example, can last for up to 2kms of continuous writing. But Japanese ballpoint pen artist, Asuka Satow, decided to start filling the backs of postcards with inked smiley faces as a way to measure exactly how much ink was in her pen. A homebody by nature, Asuka drew 600 smiley faces on the first postcard she tackled. By the second day she'd spent 10 full hours drawing black ink smileys!

Asuka dedicated much of her time over the follow 4 days to work on her ink measurement project. In the end, her pen drew 49 postcards worth of smiley faces. That's a whopping 29,249 smiley faces total! The Hi-Tec-C pen that Asuka used is a standard refill-based retail pen, so that gives you an idea of just how much writing power your own pen at home may contain!

We're not sure we'd recommend trying a project this size at home, but it really is confidence-boosting to know that your humble ballpoint pen isn't likely to run out of ink on you anytime soon.

First spotted here: http://www.lostateminor.com/2017/08/16/artist-finds-out-how-much-ink-is-in-a-pen-by-drawing-thousands-of-smiley-faces/