Craft Tutorial: Decorating Your Graduation Cap!

One of the best parts of graduating from college (aside from being done with exams forever), is seeing how everyone decorates their caps at the actual graduation ceremony! This is something that I've been looking forward to all year! I had so much fun deciding what to put on mine! 

Want to decorate your own cap? 

Here's how:

1. Get an idea! 

Head on over to Google and look at some graduation cap decorations that people have already done! This is the best way to learn the things that you like and don't like for your own cap.

I  fell in love with these two ideas that I found:

Completely bejeweled

via

&

Hello Kitty

via

I knew from these two that I wanted my cap to have jewels on it and some type of girly theme. After brainstorming a few different ideas, I decided that I wanted a bow!

A big pink bow made completely out of jewels!

2. Get your supplies!

There was no way I could draw this thing out free hand, so I hopped back on Google and searched for a bow outline that I really liked, something not too detailed, but not too simple. I didn't have my cap with me at the time, so after finding the general shape I wanted to use, I printed out a few different versions.

Later that day, I got my hat and matched up the size of bow that looked the best and most proportionate. I cut out the outline and placed it exactly where I planned on having my jewels.

3. Get your supplies!

I ran over to the Michael's Craft Store in town and purchased a 1lb bag of multicolored plastic jewels. If you've ever bedazzled before, you know that these little pieces can get expensive, especially if you prefer the ones that are already adhesive on the backside. I decided to spring for the ones that I would have to glue myself and got the whole bag for $14.99, a fraction of what I would have spent on the same amount of the other kind. 

*I also purchased some super glue to attach the gems and wooden letters to add my monogram, neither of which I ended up using. The glue didn't adhere to the cap, so instead I grabbed my hot glue gun and that worked perfectly. Also, the wooden letters were too big, so I used some glittery ones that I already had. You can save money by not purchasing either of these items until you know exactly what you want to do.

4. Lay it out!

I found that the best way to design your cap is to lay everything out, so you can see exactly what it's going to look like. I probably tried 50 different shapes and colors before I ever glued down the first gem!

This is the first version that I came up with! As you can see the bow is taking up so much of the hat that the letters are being pushed off. I decided that some things needed to be changed where this didn't happen.

I decided to condense my bow a and make it look a little cleaner. I also found some glittery letters that I used for another occasion and stuck them up top instead of the larger white ones.

Look how wonderful it turned out!

Jake & I worked for the next hour trying to figure out what else, if anything, that my cap needed. I wasn't fond of all the open black space. It wasn't until the following morning that it came to me! I wanted to put 2012 in jewels on the inside and outside of the bow! 

In order to incorporate more purple from the letters on top, I used purple beads to make the numbers and hot glued them to the hat.

Quick Tip: Don't forget to account for the button in the center that your tassel has to hang around. This will save you a lot of time and mess!

I am absolutely in love with my cap and am so glad I decided to be creative and decorate the top of it! If you have any questions, feel free to email me or check out YouTube! They have an abundance of tutorial videos on graduation cap decorating!

Congratulations Class of 2012! We did it!