Decorating My Undergrad Graduation Cap

Hey guys, 

I wanted to take another little break from blogging about my trip to Ireland and talk about how I decorated my graduation cap. I wasn’t originally planning on blogging about this and I want to apologize for the bad pictures. I took them with my iPhone 6s and was sending them to my mom and sister to show them step by step what I was doing and I figured since I had all of the pictures set up in that order that I might as well go ahead and blog about it. When I had Googled I noticed that not a lot of people had discussed how they decorated theirs and because of this I wanted to explain how I did mine. There were quite a bit of YouTube videos that explained how to do it and I actually watched one YouTube video to help me get started, which I will link here.

Before I started decorating my cap, I did some research online, I Googled pictures of decorated caps and I searched on Pinterest just to get some ideas about how to decorate it and what I should put on it. I love to travel and I currently am not entirely sure where I am going to end up because I just recently graduated and I have not applied to any jobs yet. My sister and I really want to move out of the state of Florida just so we can say that we’ve lived somewhere else and also because for the fields that we want to go into, Florida does not offer a lot of options for us. This is why I have the different cities as my theme. I really want to work in the fashion industry and I plan on applying to jobs in those cities. Florida is basically a last resort option if I can’t find anything somewhere else.

So when decorating my cap I actually messed up a little bit and had to change the order of the colors. I was originally going to do pink on the outside and blue on the inside. However, I accidentally cut the pink paper too small and so I just restarted and put the blue paper down first and then recut the pink paper and put it on top.

Materials: Blue Glitter Paper in Ocean Blue (buy in store because you can buy individually and is only around $2 or $3.) | Pink Glitter Paper in Pink | Map Letters (I couldn't find these online but I bought them at Joann Craft Store) | Black Glitter Letter Stickers | NewYork Sticker | Paris Sticker | London Sticker | Hollywood Sticker | Crown Sticker (for this I actually took it off of the top of the paris sticker because it didn't fit properly in the space on the cap with the crown on it so I just hot glued it to the circle part where the tassel attaches) | Bow Jewel Embellishments (I couldn't find these online but I bought them at Michaels Craft Store) | Owl Stickers | Eiffel Tower Sticker | Empire State Building Sticker | Clear Rhinestone Boarder in clear

Step 1: So when decorating my cap I actually messed up a little bit and had to change the order of the colors. I was originally going to do pink on the outside and blue on the inside. However, I accidentally cut the pink paper too small and so I just restarted and put the blue paper down first and then recut the pink paper and put it on top. To start with, I cut the blue glitter paper to fit the size of my cap. I made mine just a little bit larger than the actual cap just incase and then went back and cut the excess off with a pair of scissors (be careful when doing this, make sure you don't cut the fabric on the actual cap).

Next, I cut a hole in the center of the paper for the button. This part was a little tricky, I had to make a mark where the button was and then I took my X-Acto knife and cut and X into the paper and then grabbed my scissors and cut a circle out. I could have folded the paper and cut a hole out but I've worked with this paper before I know that it creases very easily and then looks really bad which is what I wanted to avoid. Next, I placed the paper on the cap and hot glued the edges down to make sure they would not move.

Step 2:

I had to cut the rhinestone boarder from a sheet of rhinestones, which was actually very challenging. I won’t go into full details but I had to use my X-Acto Knife again to be able to cut the sheet. I cut rows of two and then hot glued the strips down. I did the two sides first and then whatever space was leftover, I cut smaller strips of the rhinestones and hot glued them down.

Step 3:

I put the rhinestone bows down in each of the corners.

Step 4:

I hot glued down the lettering for my first degree, which is a Bachelors of Business Administration in Management. I also changed my mind about the rhinestone bows in the corners because they didn’t fit with the letters and with the owls as well. I really wanted to include the owls because my schools mascot is the burrowing owl and owls also represent being wise. My sister also found them in the graduation sticker section at Michaels so we thought it was perfect.

Step 5:

I added the lettering for my second degree, which is a Bachelors of Business Administration in Marketing.

Step 6:

I measured out the size the pink glitter paper should be which was a little challenging because I am a major perfectionist and I really wanted each side to be even which I don’t think it technically is even though I used a tape measure haha. After I measured everything and cut the paper, I had to cut another hole, which I did the same thing as the blue paper, and then I just hot glued the paper down.

Step 7:

Then I placed where I wanted the letters for my saying to go and then I hot glued them down as well.

Step 8:

Next, I placed the Eiffel Tower sticker on the left of my saying and the Empire State building sticker on the right side of my saying and hot glued both of them down.

Step 9:

Then I added all of the stickers for the different cities and figured out exactly where I wanted them to go and then hot glued them down.

Step 10:

I added the year I graduated using the black glitter stickers and hot glued them down.

I provided some close-ups just incase some of you want to see what some of the stickers look like close up.

This crown was actually attached to the top of the paris sticker but it did not fit in the space that I had left for it so I decided to take it off and hot glue it to the button because everyone in my family calls me a princess anyways so I thought it was very fitting.

I highly recommend hot gluing everything down just incase they fall off. I did not hot glue the clear bows on because I stuck them on the glitter paper and then tried to take them off to hot glue them down but I was unable to take them off so I figured they must be good but they actually fell after the ceremony was over and were taking pictures around campus. However, I didn’t lose any of them and I was able to just put them back on.

I couldn’t be happier with the way it turned out! No one at my school had anything that looked similar to mine and I really don’t like copying other people’s ideas so I was very glad that I was able to come up with something original! I will have to admit that it took me about 5-6 hours to do and I totally did the night before I graduated but that’s okay! I was done with school, had the free time and knew I would be able to get it done in time. I hope you enjoyed reading this post and a new Ireland post will be up tomorrow!

Feel free to leave me a comment or share this post with your friends!

Thanks for stopping by!

XO, Steph