Graduation Tassel Ornament

While browsing the web after graduation, I came across this great idea for making ornaments from your graduation tassel. After preserving my bouquet and rose, I just had to do this, too. I picked up the plastic ornament for $0.59 at Michaels during their Black Friday sale. I think I could have done with a smaller size, but no matter--I still love how this looks!

To make your own ornament from a tassel...
1. Buy a clear ornament with a cap.
2. There should be two holes in the cap where the wire goes through; cut a slit between these holes.
3. Feed the tassel through the hole in the top of the ornament. You'll probably have to turn the year tag sideways to get it in.
4. Pull the loop of the tassel through the slit you cut in the cap and cap the ornament.
5. Knot the loop of the tassel on the wire loop of the ornament.
6. Hang and enjoy!

If you'd like, you can also decorate the ornament with markers or ribbon, or add some confetti inside the ball. Get creative!

Preserving a Rose

I can't believe my first semester of college is over in a couple weeks. It's gone so quickly! I just finished a couple things from graduation because I was waiting for the craft stores to stock one thing: ornaments! The clear kind (glass or plastic) you can open up and fill yourself. Even better, Black Friday weekend meant it was all on sale at Michaels.

A few months ago, I wrote a couple posts about preserving flowers and what I did with my graduation bouquet. I'd dried my rose from graduation, coated it with hairspray, and tucked it away on a shelf until I could get an ornament ball. I picked up a plastic one for $0.29 (make sure to get the ones that have halves that snap together), tucked the rose inside, and threaded a piece of maroon embroidery floss through the hole on top. And voila! My graduation rose is now a beautiful ornament!

This was a super-easy way of preserving the rose and its accompanying memories. This is also a great idea to preserve other special flowers from a bouquet, boutonniere, or your garden!

If you want to add some extra pizzazz, check out Home Depot's dried rose Christmas ornaments. They use spray paint, some moss, and baby's breath to make extra-festive ornaments. I wanted to preserve my rose as a way to remember graduation, though, so I left it like this. Reminds me a bit of the Beast's rose in Beauty and the Beast, actually--just a different container.

Dried Graduation Bouquet

After three weeks, the flowers have dried! (See Preserving Flowers.) As I have not yet found ornament balls on sale (well, it is July), I am leaving the rose aside to work with later.

My bouquet from graduation dried nicely. Some of the sunflower petals fell off, so I glued them back. Also, gravity caused the petals on the bottom to dry upwards, which doesn't look terrible, I guess. The craspedia (the other yellow one) is a little brown on top. The originally pink carnations have darkened to a beautiful dark red. The volderfrieden delphinium (blue trumpet-shaped ones) and
statice (purple) look as if they are alive, but they feel papery. The rose, originally orange, has become light orange with a bit of red (it was already past its prime when I decided to dry it).

I transferred the bouquet from the laundry room into the garage, where I lightly coated it with aerosol hairspray. For the vase, I cut the top off an old deodorant bottle made of a milky plastic, then painted the inside with a layer of blue acrylic paint. Because the bottle wasn't tall enough, I glued a ring of paper around the top. To make it thicker, I folded it in half lengthwise. I also painted a layer of diluted glue on it, but I don't think it made much of a difference. Then I just stuck the flowers in (I left the stems rubber-banded) and retied the ribbon from the bouquet. I am very pleased with the way it turned out!