Best of the Bunch: DIY Floral Graduation Cap

As graduation weekend comes to a close, robes and honors cords hang limp in the spare closet. Wrinkled programs and clothing lay sprawled across the floor while the echo of Pomp and Circumstance reverberates in my memory.

One item, however, has not ended up discarded in a closet or on the floor-- my graduation cap. After many trials, errors, and overall frustration, I ended up with a free-handed, botanical garden.

While Pinterest offers wonderful ideas and even though I only wore the hat for a couple hours, I wanted the design to be more personally unique.

The following steps will let you know how to create your very own botanical garden!

Tools Needed:

1. Graduation Cap

2. Acrylic Paint

3. Q-tips

4. Large Fan Brush (any brand is fine)

5. Small Pointed-Tip Brush (any brand is fine)

6. Newspaper, Magazines, or Mats

Step One: Using the large fan brush paint a few coats of white acrylic paint onto the top of the graduation cap.

The trick to knowing how many coats to paint: once the streaks that still show the graduation cap fabric disappear you've covered it sufficiently. This acts as a base coat so if you would like to use a different color for your background, feel free!

Step Two: Using Q-tips mix varying shades of green with blue to create a background for your floral pattern.

As you can see my columns aren't perfectly straight or equal which is perfectly okay! You'll be going back over this entire area with layers of florals.

I began adding the first layer of dark purple clusters in the first column which will end up like hydrangea.

Step Three: Using Q-tips or brush of your choice, add the snap dragons in pink by creating three loops.

Try spacing out each section of your pattern evenly, and, once again, if you mess up you can go over it with other layers you add.

Step Four: Bring in different flowers such as rosettes and three or four-petaled flowers. Add extra layers (e.g. colors, shapes, etc.) to the previously established clusters of flowers.