Graduation!

Three years of endless school and I'm finally graduating from Texas State! Wahoo! 

With graduating comes many responsibilities. However, one of the minuscule and more exciting aspects of graduating is decorating my graduation cap! And luckily for you, I may have documented my progress. 

I started by browsing Pinterest and it's variety of graduation caps. I didn't find anything that I really enjoyed so I switched my focus to looking at quotes. I stumbled upon this ever famous quote.

Source: http://pinterest.com/pin/A0nORAAQwIACP2ZWUm0AAAA/

The teacher in me decided to switch it up and change the verbage slightly, "Teach the change you wish to see." I didn't think I could fit the "in the world part" so I wanted to add the Earth in the cap somehow. 

My final graduation cap! 

So here's how I accomplished this:

I bought black glittered scrapbook paper from Hobby Lobby to use as the base for my grad cap. I traced the cap onto the paper and cut it out so it would fit atop the cap. I then had to cut a hole for the tassel-part of the cap. 

After this, I needed to cut out a circle for the Earth part of the design. I had initially planned to use my Silhouette Cameo to cut out a circle but I was feeling a bit lazy and changed my planned. Instead I used my fishbowl and traced a circle onto a piece of cardstock. 

Once again I cut out a center circle for the tassel and then drew my design on the piece of cardstock. 

I covered all "ocean" areas with Modge Podge before sprinkling it with glitter. I placed the paper underneath the circle in order to attempt to collect the excess glitter in order to place it back in the container. 

I repeated this process with the "land" pieces of the Earth. While I waited for the "Earth" to dry, I hot glued the black glitter paper to my cap. 

(Sorry for the low quality photo here!)

I put the Earth in it's place on the cap and positioned the letters until I was happy with their position. The letters were just scrapbook stickers I bought from Hobby Lobby. For this quote, I only needed one package of stickers! 

I then added different details to the cap. I love Disney and Mickey Mouse so I purchased these small gem stickers from Hobby Lobby and used them to frame the quote. I also bought school related scrapbook stickers and placed them on the corners of the cap. 

I really wanted a bow on my cap so I created the one you see in the picture! 

Once I was happy with the placement of everything, I glued down the "Earth" piece first. I then glued down the letters, the gems, the bow and stickers. I used hot glue for everything. 

I am SO happy with how it turned out and I cannot wait for graduation!

Graduation!

My little brother is graduating today! I don't know why this makes me feel so old but it really does... After graduation we plan to have dinner as a family at a local restaurant and solicited a family member to make desserts. My cousin is a sort of "cupcake connoisseur". She is the reserved baker in our family! She even has her own out of home cupcake business by the name of A Delightful Bite. 

However, while browsing on Pinterest my mom found a cute way to serve the cupcakes:

http://birdonacake.blogspot.com/2012/05/perfectly-packaged-rose-cupcakes.html?m=1

These are packaged so nicely! Now of course, me being recently addicted to my Silhouette Cameo figured we could take this look a bit further using vinyl. 

Isn't it so cute?! I'll show you how I made this in the Silhouette software. 

I have the designer edition of the Silhouette software but I know this method will work with the regular edition as well. I found an image of a grad cap off google images and imported it into my software. 

Next, you'll want to open the trace window. This allows you to create a cut file for an image found online. 

The area that is highlighted yellow is what the Silhouette will trace. For images I find online, I usually select low pass filter because it eliminates a double line that is created when normally tracing images. 

After this, select trace and then you'll have your cut file. 

Yay!!! A new cut file! This process can be used to create a cut file from most images found online.

I played around with a couple of different variations of this design and my mom eventually picked the top left design. 

That's it! I sent my design to the Cameo and used black vinyl for the design. 

We placed purple grass in the cups for the cupcakes to sit upon. We figured this would allow for easy access to the cupcakes. 

The beautiful cupcakes inside their containers! Overall, I think these came out wonderfully and hope they'll be successful at the dinner tonight! 

Graduation Gift

My cousin is graduating from HS Saturday (yay her!) and we knew we were just going to give her money. After roaming around through Hobby Lobby for a separate craft job we saw that shadow boxes were 50% off! Then we remembered this nifty little pin we saw!

We knew instantly we needed to replicate this! This won't be a picture tutorial (because frankly it's too easy for that!)

Supplies:

Shadow box

Scrapbook paper to replicate chalkboard

School themed dimensional stickers

Paint pen/paint

Money!(;

I turned the shadow box on its side with the clasp to open and close on top. It made the "kick stand" on it still functioning. 

I then folder the scrapbook paper to fit in the inside of the shadow box. I folded it rather than cut it to keep some of the 3D feel to it since I had to take out the padded backing of the shadow box.

The chalkboard holder along the bottom was leftover from when my parents did their floors! We did have to cut it down to the appropriate length, nothing Dad couldn't handle! 

The next step was easy! I placed the cut piece of wood along the bottom of the scrapbook paper to complete the "chalkboard." Then I placed stickers wherever I felt along that bottom line.

I did place some temporary money where I wanted it to figure out spacing. The last step was writing "In case of emergency...BREAK GLASS!" in paint pen. 

 

And ta-da you're all done! It's a much prettier way of giving money and it took very little effort. Hope you enjoy!