On Saturday we celebrated our daughter’s upcoming graduation. It was a sweet day with lots of friends and family. Ashlyn and I spent many hours stalking Pinterest for decoration ideas because she didn’t want any graduation hats or high school colors.Instead, we chose a green/white color scheme to go along with the college she will attend in the fall, Roosevelt University in Chicago. Along the way I found some things I thought you might want to use in your classroom. It was so much fun to customize her party and I know you will think of great ways to use the ideas also.
Kirklands has these adorable chalkboards for $25 right now. I just love these!
We were already planning to print pictures of Ashlyn to display. Then I found the idea to have engineer prints made of photos. I ordered mine online at Staples.com. The 24″ x 36″ prints were just $3 a piece on sale. The 36″ x 48″ prints cost about $6. Look for the oversized print section and choose Engineer Prints. Everyone loved this collage we put up and were anxious to have some of their own photos printed this way!
I wanted something unique for all the guests to sign so I selected the new book written by Julie Andrews and her daughter.. The Very Fairy Princess Graduation Girl! How perfect was this! Ashlyn loves Julie Andrews and books have always been special to us, so now she has this sweet picture book signed by all the guests at the party.
We liked the chalkboard look as part of our party theme, so I wanted to create a huge chalkboard to list all of the shows and characters Ash played during high school. I went to PicMonkey and had the best luck! I had used this site before to make picture collages and edit photos, but they have a design section that is absolutely the best! I will tell you before I go on that I did upgrade to their Royale account for this project just so I had access to all the bells and whistles! Well worth the monthly fee!
If you go to Design. Then click on the icon of the apple to get to the design themes. I selected School U.
Next I scrolled down to Boards and selected a chalkboard background. I then went to Penmanship and selected the fonts I wanted to use. Just click on Add Text and change the color of the “chalk”. After I finished my typing I saved the file as a JPEG to my computer. I had the image printed at Staples 36″ x 48″ as an Engineer Print again. My husband put together an inexpensive frame we found at Hobby Lobby. Ta Da… faux chalkboard! Now Ashlyn can keep this as a momento of the day!