Graduation Party Ideas

This year my daughter graduated from high school.  I hadn't made her any scrapbooks over the years and I wanted to display her pictures in some form other than the traditional "shrine."  I spent a lot of time searching Pinterest and building my "Graduation" pin board.  In the end, I came up with my own ideas for displaying the pictures.

I hung three rows of inexpensive, 1 1/2 inch ribbon from a pressure rod I placed in my upper windows.  I attached the ribbon to a 3/8 inch wooden dowel rod that hung at the bottom of the windowsill.  The dowel kept the pictures straight and in place in the window.  Then there was no tape and no mess to clean up.   Just remove the rod and your room is back to normal.

I used scrapbooking paper and colored card-stock to make frames for each picture.  I cut the frames, pinched the corners and folded the edges of the frame slightly forward to make the frames three dimensional.  I mounted the pictures on the paper frames with two sided tape rolls and attached the framed pictures to the ribbon with hot glue.

I sorted the pictures by age groups.  The picture above was in the dining room where we had the candy buffet.  It had pictures from birth through preschool.

Behind our sofa were the pictures from elementary and middle school years.  To the right were pictures from her freshman- junior years of high school.

These pictures were in my kitchen table window and showed her senior year and graduation images.

I made triangular flag banners with scrapbooking paper and card-stock.  The graduation caps were cut from glitter card-stock and the tassel was made of embroidery floss, (Thanks Lauri Tierney for the wonderful ideas!)   I tied glittered tule between each flag and hung them with dorm tape (Mavalus Tape.)

I have a cool coffee table where you can display items.  (I usually decorate it for the season or holiday.)  It was a great place to display her cap and diploma.

 We decided to have a candy buffet instead of cake.  It was fun and the "kids" from age one to grandma seemed to enjoy it.   I found lots of great ideas for it on Pinterest.

I found small buckets after Easter that were perfect for our guests to fill and take home.

"Courtney's Sweet Shop" made a fitting banner.

It was a lot of work, but everyone had a good time and Courtney loved it.  I wouldn't have changed a thing.

Diving In & Tossing Out

I was looking for a place to share creative ideas with others.  I am hoping to find a little time to "dive into" a personal blog and "toss out" my ideas to the other creative seekers floating in the "cloud."

In this blog, you will find

• Original, flashes and sparkles of my own creative ideas
• My interpretation/piggy-back inspiration from creative ideas I have seen
• Fabulous ideas of others that I just can't see a reason to change

I will do my very best to always credit the source/s of my inspiration and posted ideas.  I hope to post ideas and projects for my home, family, gifts, culinary creations and the general "feeding of my soul" art and craft explorations.   I also want to include ideas from my classroom experiences as a primary gifted teacher.

Feel free to share your thoughts and suggestions as I am always looking for inspiration and ways to adapt, elaborate upon and improve my projects/creations/work.