Graduation Card Tutorial

Original Post May 2018

Hi Everyone!

I hope you are all having a good weekend :)

I am finally getting to this tutorial for a Graduation greeting card I meant to post last week but the time totally got away from me!  So here goes!

First, before I forget, here are the products I used:

Plain Box Card - from SVGCuts.com.  It was included as an extra in a kit but I can't find which one - my apologies!  I will contact her and get back to you.

Graduation paper - I purchased this really cute paper pack on Etsy from HuckleberryHearts.

Graduation Elements - I purchased from misskatecuttables.com

Extras:  Zots 3D Adhesive Dots, Scotch Tacky Glue, ColorBox Pigment Ink, Darice Graduation Embossing Folder

This tutorial also assumes you know the basics for constructing a box card so I won't go into details here.  You can find great instructions on SVGCuts.com.

The first thing I wanted to do was create the crowd so I cut out the basic crowd graphic on black cardstock.  (You can find this image all over the internet if you Google it.) I cut the original image out in it's entirety and then just decided which part I wanted to choose for each layer and cut it down to size.  More on that below.

But when I put the three layers in the card it really just looked like a black blob and you could not see the details.  So I wanted to try a white shadow layer.  I found several YouTube videos by Wendy Edwards which I found to be super helpful and simple to follow like this one on creating a shadow layer behind an image.  So, I followed the instructions and I'm super happy how it turned out.  I'll post my edited svg cutting files below if you want to try it.

I made three sizes so the crowd would be sort of like stadium seating levels.  The first layer is at 100%, the second layer at %110 and the third at %120.  So I did the same thing with the shadow layer and this is how it looks.

Next, I decided to use the center of the smallest image for the front of the card.

For the next two layers I repeated this process, making sure I didn't choose the same part of the crowd for two consecutive layers.  And I saved the scraps to use on another project or another card even.  I hope this makes sense!  Here is a pic of the scraps.

I embossed gold paper with Darice's graduation embossing folder for the inside panels.  It's hard to see in this pic but it's a really cool design.

And used the cute graduation digital paper for the exterior panels.

Then I added the "Hats Off", "You Did It", and individual hats I purchased from misskatecuttables.com.

For the back, I just stamped "Happy Graduation" from an old stamp.  I don't know what brand it is.

And that's pretty much it!  I hope you have enjoyed this as much as I have!  Please let me know if you have any questions:)

Laurie :)

You can download the files here:

Crowd                          Shadow layer

(contact me if you have any trouble with the files)