Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Kids' Bike License Plates


I got this idea from Janiel's blog, which you can't visit because she's gone private since I stumbled across her over a year ago. Sorry. Regardless, you can still benefit from her crafty wisdom, because I've stolen her idea and I'm sharing it with you today. Because I'm a thief.

Surely you've seen the cutesy bike license plates that you can buy for your kids, right? Except that you can never find your kid's name, or if you can, they spelled it wrong because apparently license plate manufacturers are illiterate. Or maybe it's me? 

Anyway, I do have a point here. If you want to make license plates for your kids, the Idaho Transportation website has this little dealie bob where you type in a plate name you want to search for, and then it pops up for you to preview it. Probably they don't intend for you to save that little preview to your desktop and print it for your own evil purposes, but that's exactly what I did. Because Janiel did it first, and I rationalized that it must be okay if she did it. Right?

And, oopsie, I might have gone a little crazy and made some for a few of my peeps' kids too.

After I lifted my counterfeit plates off the Idaho Transportation website, I printed them out as 4x6 prints and then trimmed away the white bits on the top and bottom.

Then I mounted them on white card stock and laminated them so they would survive when one of my little angels left their bike out in the rain. Or drove through a mud puddle. Or was attacked by a slobbering Saint Bernard. Or whatever. Use your imagination.


The final step was to punch two holes at the top and reinforce them with eyelets. Yes, I know I said two and you see four holes there, but remember, I'm Bob Vila's nightmare and I measure once and cut twice. Against his stern advice. 

And apparently it matters where exactly your holes should go depending on whose bike it's going on and where exactly you are going to attach it. So you should probably listen to Bob Vila, and first figure out where you are going to mount yours and then where your holes should go. Then you just take a couple of zip ties, thread them through your holes and TA-DA, your offspring are all street legal. Or at least they look like they are. Because they're counterfeit plates, remember?

Did you know that some people are very picky about their license plates? When we moved here and had to get Idaho plates, Peanut Head refused to get the standard Idaho plates because they have "Famous Potatoes" on them. He was so adamant about it, that we are paying $20 extra every ding dang year just so he can drive around without the famous potatoes on his car. And he loves french fries!

I mean I could understand if Idaho were the Broccoli capital of the world and the plates exclaimed Buxom Broccoli!, but Famous Potatoes? 

He's so lucky that I made him a plate for his bike and resisted the very tempting urge to pick the potato plates. I know Peanut Head is going to be so excited to see his plate. I am so good to that man.

If any of you find websites for other states where you can do this, please leave a comment with the web address so we can all have plates for our states. Wouldn't that be cool? We could make personalized plates for all our nieces and nephews for Christmas. People everywhere will covet our counterfeit plates. [Sigh.]

19 comments:

  1. You can do it on the Virginia Website! I will be making some for my kids bikes! Thanks for sharing.

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  2. Love, love, love this idea! So fun! Here's the Utah link:

    https://secure.utah.gov/pps/

    I can't seem to get the preview image to save to my desktop (it'll save, but the license plate image disappears). Bummer! Let me know if someone else gets Utah to work. I'd love to make these!

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  3. Here is the link to NV
    https://dmvapp.nv.gov/dmv/vr/plateav/plateav_input.aspx

    The only downfall is that if someone already has that plate, it wont even let you see what it would look like. how ruuuudddddeee! But, got the kids nicknames, so I wont freak out! Ha! Cute idea though!!

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  4. That is very clever!
    I quite love the IDAHO plates.

    I may have to do this for a couple of grandkids.
    Great scrapbooking idea too! Or cardmaking.

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  5. Well, hello!!! I come read your blog...and there is my name. I feel SOOO cool now! This reminds me, I now need to make up some new ones with Natalee's name on them.

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  6. That is just too NEAT!!! Fun too!

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  7. Here is the Kentucky website: http://mvl.ky.gov/MVLWeb/PIServlet#ABC0

    I love this! I can never find anything with Aidan spelled "correctly".

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  8. Your posts always make me giggle! Loved the commentary about Peanut Head's objections to the famous potatoes plates. =D {I'm a born & raised Idaho-girl.} Also loved the Bob Vila reference. We faithfully watched "This Old House" every week with my dad. =)

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  9. Very cool idea! I'll check Colorado's when I get back from vacation.

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  10. Ooooh...I'm calling the Cops on you..

    Love the plates - I agree, what's wrong with Famous Potatoes? It could be a lot worse! xxx

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  12. I see someone beat me to the Kentucky website. We can only have up to 6 letters on ours though. :( Good thing my kids names are shorter than that, well at least their nicknames are.

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  13. Very clever indeed! Here is Texas
    http://www.myplates.com/Categories/PLPC003

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  14. Awesome idea. Thank you. Here is CA https://www.dmv.ca.gov/ipp2/initPers.do

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  15. Here is the link for Minnesota. It took me a long time to find it, so I sure hope someone will use it!

    www.imagechef.com/t/h2fe/Minnesota-License-Plate

    Love your page by the way!!

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