The finished bracelet!

A bracelet at each step! These made create examples and creating them was the perfect opportunity for me to practice!

Another Wish

This wouldn't have worked to well for this particular program because I'm not at that branch on a regular basis but when I do this at my home branch I'll be sure to wear the bracelet for a few days before the program in hopes that it will give more opportunities to spread the word about the comming program. I might be able to get other staffers to do that in my place at other branches.

Wishing

There are several things I'll do differently the next time I do this program but I know that I'll for sure do it again with teens at another branch.

I normally set programs up to be an hour to an hour and a half but this doesn't take even close to that long so I think I'll market it more like a drop by and make this sort of thing. That will also make it easier for me to continue working with a just a couple teens at a time.

During this program I had a collection of books on green crafts available and on display but they weren't very well recieved and not a one checked out. I want to find a way to make the fact that is a green craft more well known and try to use that to inspire them to try more green crafts. I'd like to find a shocking or funny statistic about pop tabs that would grab their attention and make them more aware that they arn't just making a bracelet that looks cool, they're doing something good for the environment. I might have better luck with this if I do it closer to Earth Day.

I'd also like to get more guys involved. Maybe I'll make a belt as an example next time. I also have to be sure I have more masculine materials available. I had a lot of ribbon and bright colors that if I had had a boy show up he might have found the selection of materials disappointing. Marketing will also be key in improving the number of guys involved. The flyer I used showed an especially girly version which I doubt even caught their eye. I think if I can just get one guy to come in and try it other will follow his lead.

A Little More Waving & Webbing

Once I'd decided to do the pop tab bracelet program I had to hunt down enough pop tabs so that I could do a lot of practicing and have enough for several teens to each make their own bracelet. Of course I started collecting tabs at home but we don't drink nearly enough soda for that to enough. I sent out some emails to coworkers, family members, and friends and I put a container on the breakroom table asking for contributions. People were mostly throwing them away so they were glad to save them for a higher purpose and before long a had a whole bag full!

More Waving

The next communication issue I've got going on with this program is actually teaching the teens how to create their bracelet. I always make sure I've got plenty of directions floating around so that they can take a copy home or consult the directions if they don't want to ask for my help. With this particular project's materials being so small it's difficult to show more than a couple of teens at a time so I try to get a couple going and then get a couple more going. I also made sure that before the program even started I had bracelets already out for each step. To keep the conversation between myself and the teens going I try to give them a couple steps at a time to do and then have them let me know when they're ready for the next part. This way they feel like I'm treating them like an adult and not holding thier hand the whole time but we don't stop communicating because they want me to see they were able to accomplish that without having their hand held and they want to know how to move on from there. This gives me a lot more opportunities to work with them one on on and make a connection each teen. Making that connection is something I find to be important when trying to get them to keep coming back to the library/programs.

Waving

Now that I've got the project it's self figured out I've got a couple of communication issues to tackle. First I've got to do some major arm waving to get teens to come to my program. Prior to the actually program I sent out promotional flyers and posters to the branch where I was planning to show the teens how to create these bracelets. I'm also always tring to communicate with the staffers at that branch so that they'll verbally spread the word to teens about upcoming programs. This particular branch has a great number of teens hanging around after school but they never seeme to make it into the programs. No matter how much I try to encourage employees to share upcoming programs with them or how many poster I put around the library or how many emails I shoot the local school media specialist it seems like no one knows we're offering anything. To help combat that problem I got the teens who showed up to the pogram at the start time going on the project and then took a lap around the library letting teens who were hanging out know what was going on and that they were welcome to join in. That worked out pretty well, three of the girls I talked to on my walk through came in just a little while later.

Wiggling/Weaving/Wrapping

Like I've said I find ideas all over the place which makes the number of orginal projects I have to come with pretty close to zero. To some people that probably sounds boring but it actually works great because for me because it means that someone else has already gotten things going and I just need to tweak the project or wiggle it until it's the best fit possible for my needs. Another material I've got couple different projects for is pop tabs. They dont' exactlly fit my call for a material that I can find no other way to be rid of, besides the trashcan, but do get thrown away a lot. A few years ago, before the Twilight craze hit, Kristin Stewart sported a poptab bracelet. I just recently saw the picture again and it reminded me that I had a couple sets of directions for how to make those bracelets. I started looking at the different directions and trying them out trying to figure out which way would work the best. After a couple of trials with the different directions I found a way to make the bracelets that I thought I could easily teach the teen I work with.

Webbing

I keep a lot of folders in my desk drawers at work to hold all the ideas that I come across. It seems as though I'm always having a quick thought; a scrap of paper saying "hit up the local Chinese restuarant for chopsticks for summer reading" goes into "Summer Reading 2011" and some photocopied pages of Dollar Store Decorating go into "Teen Craft Ideas". I get program ideas from all over the place and the folder thing is my system for keeping them organized. Then when I'm more ready to actually think of the logistics I can go through the folder and find something that fits my need. Lots of the ideas I throw into the "Teen Craft Ideas" folder are green. Sometimes I'll come across several similar ideas using the same materials all from different locations. I've got several t-shirt crafts all stapled together. I probably started with an idea from one book and then added something I saw in a magazine. I stapple the ideas together because one of them might have been what first struck me but a later version might be what actually works best for my program.

Wondering

Now I'm starting to wonder what types of materials actually go in the trash and with all the advances being made in people's efforts to recycle pickings are much slimmer then they used to be. I didn a program last fall when we made "Alternative Pumpkins" out of tin (is it really tin?) cans but even those could have been recycled. I've got a big bag of plastic grocery bags in my living room I'm using to make plarn so I can attempt to knit my self a plarn tote but even those can be turned back in at grocery stores. Plus I don't even get very many bags anymore because I take my own. What do I throw away? Sadly I throw away a lot of things that I could recycle, and I don't even know why. I realize my mistake as soon as I do it but I'm just like that kid in Chris VanAllsburg's book, lazy.

Here are a few things I know I threw out in the last couple of days...
water bottle
orange peel
gum
laminate scraps
used up Starbucks gift card
candy wrapper
exired coupons
map quest directions
t-shirt sale tag

Watching

Planning programs in a public library means many things one of those is being bombarded with ideas. This is great because it makes coming up with your own ideas easier and the need to do so, if you don't want to, almost unnessary. While I constantly get new ideas from websites, confrences, magazines, listservs, books, and on and on they won't all work for the patrons I'm trying to reach. One type of program that I find my self going to over and over is crafting, especially crafting with materials that would otherwise be trash. I've used old t-shirt to create pillows and bags. That was great because it gave the t-shirts a new use but even if they hadn't been used in those crafts it's unlikely they would have ended up in the trash. Goodwill would have gotten some and so would home rag collections. What I don't see often enough is crafts with things that would truly become trash if I didn't find a way to repurpose them.

Wow!

Wow - I'm not ready to dive into the 8 W's but I wanted to jot a bit about why I'm "Craftin' Green"! I love love love flipping through craft books at work and home to get ideas for projects I can do at work and home. My biggest complaint, and it's the same for cooking, is that I don't have the materials already on hand. But crafting with recycled goods, or upcyling as I heard it called today, makes that obstacle so much easier to overcome. And even if you don't have the stuff readily available you can usually get other to help you round up and save them until you have enough. I was at ILF's CYPD conference today and sat in on a session about Green Programming @ Your Library and I am so excited to get started on this project because many of the ideas I heard today are things I've already done and/or would like to expand on.