Every middle schooler is seeking money, for fortnite skins, airpods or something in between for their graduation gifts. (At least the ones I know are). In my mind, I enjoy living through imaginary circumstances and choose to believe they will be saving their money for college. So we created a DIY graduation gift to help them get started.
We created a money cake, because an envelope with cash just doesn’t make a special presentation. Of course no child will complain either way, but for us it’s all about the presentation, and going that extra step.
To make your own money cake you will need:
- Round Styrofoam discs for each layer
- A oval shaped styrofoam for the top
- graduation cap
- a plastic plate for the base
- a stick for the center length varies based on height of your cake
- Ribbon or clear rubber bands
- a glue gun
- black acrylic paint
- Money
- tissue paper or foil paper
We first glued the styrofoam discs together and to the plastic plate. We then painted the styrofoam black and inserted a stick in the middle for stability.
The base layer we measured, and then layered money 3/4 on top of the other. We then taped the money in one long strip and wrapped around the base layer, followed by a ribbon which was pinned in to the back of the base layer.
We then rolled up money like mini diplomas secured them with a plastic clear rubber band and then wrapped them around one layer and wrapped a bow around the layer.
The top layer is oval because we wanted to make sure the cap fit on nicely. However, the money became harder to layer as we did the others. So we just created a few folds to make it work and pinned them, then we attached the cap with pins over the top.
Knowing the high school our graduate will be attending in the Fall, we went online and downloaded their logo and attached it to the cap to make it more personal. Also to show our valedictorian how proud we truly are of him!
We cut out the logo and hot glued it to the cap. We then felt the cake looked a little plain so we shred up gold foil paper, (you can use regular tissue paper for the same look) and crinkled it and applied to the base of each layer with double sided tape.
Too much work? Or yes this is a cool idea for the grad in my life?
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