It is somewhat of a tradition to decorate your graduation cap and show off your personality in a room full of oversized garbage bag robes. And being in the midst of graduations I thought it would be useful to share how I decorated Nick’s graduation cap (seeing that I won’t be graduating until December). Better my mistake than yours.
The supplies needed can vary depending on how you want your cap to look, but some of the basic steps are necessary and universal. For Nick’s, I used: a black sheet of cardstock, hot glue, other colored cardstock, and scissors. You can also use paint, glitter and print outs.
The first thing I did was measure and cut the black cardstock to fit the cap. It’s important to use cardstock so that if you mess up your design you don’t ruin your cap, only the paper. Then I removed the button on the top of the cap. It may take a little struggle, but you will want to remove the button, it makes it a lot easier to decorate and glue down your design.
After the cap is off, place the black cardstock on top and push the needle that the button was on through the cardstock. That way you will be able to know where the exact center is, and can decorate around it.
I then began creating my design. I highly reccommend sketching everything out with a pencil first and using a ruler. Nothing is worse then spending tons of time and money on a project only to have it ruined by your lack of mesuring. I speak from experience. During this process I realized that printing out the numbers and letter I needed would be a lot better then my crappy freehand. If you have as little faith in your freehand as me, then I deffinetly suggest using stencils or gluing on things that you have printed out.
Lastly and the most important is step is to glue down the black cardstock you have decorated onto the actual cap. Remember when you do this to know where EXACTLY the front of the cap is. After I glued down my decoration onto the top I realized It was backwards and had to carfullt peal it off. Please don’t make my mistakes. Also, don’t forget to pop your button back onto the cap. You can use a little hot glue to make it more secure.
