Graduation Cards

When you work with the youth group, you have a lot of graduation cards and gifts to give. I like to make the grad cards, as it saves us a little money, but I was stumped for ideas until I saw this post. I figured with some black cards and my Martha Stewart number/letter stamps, I could do something similar.

I started with black cards. I bought them on clearance at Joann's last weekend. Ten cards for $1.97. I used a pencil to mark the center point and 2 points on the edges, then drew lines to make a V-shape.



I cut those off and was left with a nice point.



Next I used my Martha stamps to create 2010, which I stamped on the cards. I also ran the edges of the V along my stamp pad. Then I sprinkled on embossing powder and heated it.




Next I needed a tassel. I'm sure they can be bought somewhere inexpensively, but I don't know where that place is. I bought the only tassels I could find at Joann's. They were too short, and they came out to $1 per tassel! Yikes! Then I got the bright idea to go to Half-Price Books and buy some of their cheapy bookmarks. They were only 48 cents each and had the appropriate-length tassels. Even better, they were having a 20%-off everything sale! So, I bought a bunch of bookmarks and just removed the tassels for use on my cards.



I measured to find the center, then poked a hole in the card, stuck a brad through it, and attached the tassel. Then I was left with this ugliness on the inside of the card:



So, I took all those corners I cut off the cards and used them to cut out little rectangles to glue over the ugly backs of the brads.




All done!



I opted not to stamp anything on the inside, as I like to write a nice personal note to each kid. I wanted to make sure I had plenty of room to do that without it being seen from the front. But I think it would be nice to stamp a Congratulations or something inside if you don't want to say much beyond a signature.