License Plate Journals

Last Friday, 21 teens showed up for our summer journal workshop.  We made journals out of old license plates!  (Big thanks to my dad for the donation of some old license plates from his basement!)  It was really simple.  We just hooked them together with some report rings. The hardest part was punching the holes in the paper to fit inside; everyone's hands got really tired.  We created special title pages with stickers and drawings, then broke them in with some writing.

Special thanks to Nitha and Caitlin, library grads who love to write.  They helped me out with the event, and each taught a writing exercise to the group!  Caitlin had everyone brainstorm three characters, three settings, and three props, and then use at least one of them to write a paragraph.  Nitha talked about different kinds of haiku and had people write their own.  I talked about six-word memoirs, and gave away some copies of I Can't Keep My Own Secrets while people worked on telling a story in six words.  We definitely had some creative writers in the group, and it was fun to hear everyone read their work aloud. 

I have some leftover supplies, so look for this project at Craft Closet Cleanout in August!  And, if you have some license plates of your own hanging around, try this easy License Plate Memo Board.

 Cleaning the license plates--very important!

 Assembling the journals and making title pages.

Writing!