A Project Record work session is scheduled for Thursday, December 17th from 6PM to 9PM in the Activity Room at the Gaston County Citizens Resource Center in Dallas. This is a RSVP drop in event. Besides bringing your supplies, everyone also needs to bring an easy to prepare snack and or drink. When RSVP ing please indicate what type of snack or drink you will be bringing. Participants may be asked to bring a different item depending on the diversity of items submitted (or lack there of).

This session is open to ALL county 4-H members including Cloverbuds.

The session will be focusing on the Personal Touch/Express Yourself section of your project record. Parent volunteers and senior 4-H'ers with project record experience will be available to offer suggestions and answer questions. This will be a great time to work with other 4-H'ers and to be inspired to complete a project record for 2009.

Below is a description of the "Personal Touch/Express Yourself" section from the 4-H Project Record Guide booklet:

"4-H Personal Touch/Express Yourself"

This section is devoted to sharing your 4-H project in an expressive way. You can use a variety of ways to share. Pictures, poems, newspaper articles, etc can be used. The sky is the limit. Just be sure to check the page limitations. All pictures, poems, newspaper articles, etc. should be about focused mainly on this one project. However, you should include things under leadership, citizenship and community service as a part of your record."

4-H Project Record Guide is located at http://www.nc4h.org/youth/awards.html. This guide's web link is located in the Project Records section of this 4-H web page.

Below are a few suggestions for those planning to attend...

Begin now preparing for this evnet opportunity by collecting the items you would like to use in your Express Yourself section.

Be sure to visit the above web address and review the guidelines for this section in the appropriate age category; especially the number of pages allowed. Remember, the 4-H age is your age as of January 1, 2009. This information will be needed to determine how many pages to plan for when collecting these items. It is always better to have more items than are needed, so that the very best items can be selected to include in the project record.  It may also be aparent that more can fit in this section than originally planned. Do not include valuable items in the project record; a picture or copy can be substituted for valuable items.  That we know of 4-H'ers have never had any thing lost or damaged through the submission process, however it is a possibility since these project records do travel for competition.

Take advantage of sales on scrapbook paper and stickers at Hobby Lobby and Michaels Craft stores. It is not uncommon for these stores to have sales on 8.5 by 11 scrapbook paper for 5/1.00 or 4/1.00 and scrapbook stickers on sale for 30% to 50% off.  Remember to be creative with an air of style and try to use materials in colors which will enhance the materials to be included and theme.

Consider copying newspaper articles to be included and even reducing their size some.

Consider pre-writing poetry, if that is a desired item, to include in the section for mounting that evening as opposed to using the time that evening to write it.

Make sure that all photographs are captioned - all photographs. There are a few options available with regards to including captions. If a computer is going to be used to create them then try and create them a head of time, so they can be ready to apply to the page that evening.

If photographs are to be the majority of the page then plan on bringing 3 to 4.  If the photos can be croped down in size then plan on 4 to 5. To enhance the photograph impact on the page think about bringing coordinating paper to mat some of the pictures.

These are only some suggestions, I'm sure 4-Her creativity will greately expand this list. Be creative and remember, in planning for this evening event, gather together and bring all the supplies that will be needed to complete the this section.

What about tools and other supplies?

We will have some on-site, but recommendations include... scissors, adhesive (glue sticks, photo tape squares etc), paper, and any scrapbook tools you may have such as decorative scissors, punches, corner rounders etc. Consider using acid free/lignum free products if you plan to keep these project records for a long period of time. Using these types of products will reduce the chances of the records deteriorating in 10 years or so.

Some scrapbook tools will be there as well, such as a sizzix die cut machine to help assist in developing these pages.

If there are any questions about the other sections of the project record please bring those too and the volunteers working this event will be happy to offer suggestions and help you work through any problem areas.

If you are planning to attend please RSVP to Jeff Lee at jtmmlee@carolina.rr.com. We are on the calendar for the Activity Room and we want to make sure we have plenty of room to work based on the number who RSVP.

Hope to see you there!