Happy Graduation!

Graduation season snuck up on me this year and caught me totally unprepared. Didn't realize so many of our friends and family were graduating this year till we started receiving all the announcements in the mail! It's a very good thing I had the cutfile for this card I created last year to fall back on.

Opening the card pulls out the gift card or monetary gift hidden in the pocket of the grad hat. Got the original template for this neat card shared by Alicia Coulombe at the Splitcoast Stampers Message board. Scroll down on her post for the links to the instructions and template she created. Or, if you own Design Studio and the George cartridge, I'll be more than happy to share my cutfile.

Ended up having to make six of these cards. The images of the guy and girl graduates on each hat are digistamps from InStyle Stamps, colored with copics and prismacolor pens, then cut out and adhered with foam tape. As a personal touch, I added each graduate's name to the front of the card using a Sizzlits Skittle Dee Doo Alphabet die cut strip, and tried to match the hats and tassels to each grad's school colors. Though I used a premade tassel (Jolees) from my stash for my first card, there were no more to be found at any of the lss I checked, so I was left with no choice but to try and make my own using DMC embroidery floss and some gold lame thread. They were actually pretty easy to do, and definitely more economical than purchasing the ready made ones.



Since I didn't have brads in all the matching colors for the buttons on the hats, I punched out 1/2 inch circles, used a Punch Bunch shaping tool to "cup" them and glued them onto the black brads to cover them.

"Congratulations" is a die cut from the Sizzlits Cardmaking set, and the "you did it" and star cuts on the inside sliding pocket are from the Beyond Birthdays cartridge. Then as a final touch I used Krylon gold and silver leafing pens to outline the edges of the hats.