Hello everyone! It is Erin Floto from @erinflotodesigns here. ConGRADulations on reaching the end of the road! It is time to share that news with your family and friends, take some graduation photos, and using the Archer and Olive Acrylograph pens to decorate your graduation caps in a fun and creative way! Acrylographs can be used in so many different ways outside of your planner so let's start another project with these paint pens!

But first, here are the items you will need:

• Acrylograph Pens - I picked a rainbow set of colors (primary red, primary orange, sunset yellow, spring green, splish splash, tropical purple, and grape jelly) but any colors that work for you work for this!
• Graduation Cap - I bought one off of Amazon but these are typically provided.
• Black Cardstock - I used a matte black cardstock from Michaels craft store here in the U.S. This may not be required for all graduation caps. Do a test first!
• Creativity - I only used pens for this graduation cap but you could use felt alphabet stickers to make it pop from the graduation cap, use washi tape, ribbon, rhinestones, and more to make your graduation an eclectic piece of fun artwork!

Where Do I Start?

Getting a graduation cap of course! This is typically provided by the school or organization but I went out and bought one from Amazon. Unfortunately, my cap had a fabric with long lines which can cause the Acrylograph ink to bleed. So I also picked up some black cardstock from the craft store and cut it to size. Cutting out the middle portion was not my best work but I was lacking a knife cutting tool so I would highly suggest a tool like Slice to cut out the middle button. 

Next is picking your color scheme. I went with a rainbow theme because it makes me so very happy to see rainbows everywhere and reaching graduation almost feels like reaching the end of the rainbow in a long and tough journey. Make sure you are picking colors that can pop off of the background. For my cap, it was easy because the graduation cap was black. But black may not always be the color of your graduation cap so be sure to take the color of the cap into account when deciding on a color scheme. 

Quotes To Get You Started

For my graduation cap, I decided to do an oldie but goodie and do the quote, “The best is yet to come,” in a stylized lettering with large flourishes. There are tons of inspiration pictures online for other types of quotes so definitely check those out for more inspiration for your own cap. If you are stuck, I’ve made a few printables as well! I have 2 graduation cap quotes including, “The best is yet to come,” and, “”Now I can afford my stationery addiction. Class of 2023.” Other ideas include something specific to your major or area of study, your graduating class, organizations you belong to, what profession you will be going into, and more!

Lettering

I started out my graduation cap with a pencil sketch of the wording and types of flourishes that I wanted to include. Sketching out with pencil helps when it comes to lettering chicken - when your word is too big for the space and your letters get smaller and smaller to try to fit the entire word. When it comes to showing off my cap in graduation photos, that is definitely something that I would want to avoid! 

Next, I started with each color to create a rainbow gradient down my graduation cap. I started with the red on the top and slowly worked my way through the quote adding the subsequent rainbow color. Between each of the color changes, I added uneven lines so it looks more blended into each other, rather than a hard stop from one to the next.

All in all, I loved the color scheme that I created. The fun part about a rainbow theme is it is so easy to do and you could use the primary collection as a whole to get each color of the rainbow! For me, I wanted to change up the colors slightly and also add in an indigo, so I opted to choose colors outside of the primary collection as well!

Decorations

Since Archer and Olive is known for their simple botanicals, I decided having a collage of florals in the background would be perfect for this graduation cap! I used a few variations of their classic leaves, flowers, and simple botanical line drawings in the rainbow gradient to finish off this beautiful graduation cap! 

As I mentioned in the video there are a ton of optional decorations you could do or way to make your quote pop out. In this case, I think a white outline on the quote would look amazing as well to make the quote stand out. But get creative with it! You could get beads or rhinestones from the dollar store to surround the outside of the graduation cap. You could add washi tape or clear back stickers to the graduation cap to add some decorations. This graduation cap is yours and make it a fun project after your hard work and celebrate this amazing accomplishment!

If you are more visual and auditory learner or love to watch sped up lettering and decorating videos, I’ve also included a video. I hope that they are helpful for you while you are making your own graduation cap!

I hope this blog, video and printable gives you the inspiration you need to make the best graduation cap and have the best graduation photos of all time!! Thank you so much for joining and please tag @erinflotodesigns and @archerandolive and #aoshare on Instagram with any graduation caps you create!