We enjoyed a fabulous weekend in Austin celebrating our son's girlfriend's graduation from the University of Texas at Austin!  Here is the card I made for her.  I had planned to post a "decoy" ahead of time to fool her in case she was looking at my blog, but I ran out of time!  I love this easel card, so easy to make and looks like a special style!

Saturday was a very full day!  First was a luncheon with her parents and family, then the graduation ceremony, and finally the spectacular University-Wide Commencement outside at the UT Tower.  You have to arrive more than two hours ahead to get a seat for that evening event….did I mention it is outside?….in Texas?….in May?….but they do provide free ice water!…and paper fans…..and it wasn't TOO bad being outside for over five hours in the evening… there was a breeze….and it will get a LOT hotter than that pretty soon….so, not too bad.  There were over 7000 graduates and their familes!  I'm sure they weren't all there, but most of them were!!  The actress Marcia Gay Harden was the speaker, and it was fun to hear the deans bestow the degrees on each school, some offering a little humor in their spiel or perhaps the graduates having some impromptu reaction.  Finally the evening concluded with the impressive fireworks display off the Tower and "The Eyes of Texas" playing in the background.  The Tower is lit in orange for the graduates and the windows display a "10" for the graduation year if you look carefully!  It's really a great way to celebrate commencement!

Here's another graduation card (or for any occasion) made following almost the same idea as THIS card in a previous post.  This time I wanted a money holder.  This card is not as wide as it should be to hold the money, but in this case I wanted it to fit in a certain envelope….so I'll just have to fold the money in half!  The card front measures 3" x 6" with a fold up pocket on the inside of 2".  Therefore, you need to cut your cardstock at 8" x 6", scoring at 2" and 5" so you can fold the 2" pocket up inside the card and then the 3" top folds down.

The star actually spins on the front!  I found the design by Dawn while browsing on Splitcoast here.  It adds a fun little element! 

If you need the star punches to make a spinning star, just place your order here on my website.

This is a pretty easy graduation card to make.  I admit to using some retired paper and stamps, but the color, Cranberry Crisp, seemed to match the school colors pretty well.  The retired stamp set is "In the Stars" but I thought that words on the star were perfect for graduation.  I stamped the star on the ivory cardstock twice, cutting out one image and popping it up with dimensionals.  I had embossed the little stars on the card with gold embossing powder, but then added a couple of star punches out of Brushed Gold cardstock.  The gold-embossed "Congrats" is from the current Ronald McDonald stamp set, "Say It with Scallops", found on the inside of the back cover of the catalog.  Stampin' Up! donates $2 for every one of this set sold to RMDH…..it's a great stamp set and while you're stamping you know you're also helping out a worthy cause.

A year ago we were looking forward to our son's college graduation and now that first year post-college has really flown by.  If I can offer a few words of advice to those of you going to graduation at a large university…..Don't park in the garage!  Not that we knew that, but we happened to see a spot on the street as we were dropping him off for the ceremony and managed to parallel park there.  That saved us at least an hour of time trying to get out of the parking garage after the ceremony!  We know because we were waiting for his friends to join us at lunch and they had parked in the garage!

Another tip would be to make sure your graduate is awake and AT the ceremony before you sit there with the whole family waiting for that glorious moment of seeing your child walk across the stage, only to find out that he overslept and isn't even there!  Thankfully that isn't a personal story, but I heard other parents recounting that story while I waited to be seated at a restaurant!  Just a college thing, I'm sure!

So here's a sample graduation card made with the "Great Grads" set and a rub on from "A Perfect Day".  Gotta love those rub ons!  Of course you would want to use your school colors or favorite combination, but I used Brilliant Blue, Whisper White, Basic Black, and Brushed Gold.  The cap is stamped twice, cut out, and popped up with a Dimensional.  I colored around the white area a little just to help it stand out.

If you need supplies to make a graduation card, hurry and contact me so we can get them ordered and in your hands.  You might not think that high school or college kids would care that their card was handmade by you, but they do!

I have to say I made this card up myself, this morning, so it can't be too hard!  The card is 4×4, so cut your base cardstock 4"x8" and fold in half.  Then your Whisper White layer is 3 3/4" x 3 3/4".  You could do this card in whatever colors match your school or personality!  After embossing the word "Congratulations" from the set "Hugs and Wishes" in gold, I just punched out some stars with our two star punches on pages 184-5 in the Idea Book & Catalog.  You can punch out the little star first, then place your Large Star punch around the small punched out star and punch and get the star with the little star in the middle.  Or you can layer the solid stars.  Just play with it!  You can even just stamp the Congratulations in black or another color rather than emboss.  Have fun!