Money Holder graduation card tutorial

Tonight I taught a class on how to make 4 different styles of money and gift card holders. I think they all turned out pretty cute and I'll be showing you all of them over the next few days, starting with this graduation money holder. Of course this is the front of the card, so it's not exactly exciting.

The card base is kraft. The mats are soft sky and a piece of east coast prep double sided designer series paper. The graduation cap is from Year after year stamped in basic black on whisper white card stock and then colored with wild wasabi ink and a blender pen (I also used a more mustard marker at the top of the tassel). The edges of the whisper white card stock were colored with soft sky ink using the direct to paper method and the image was adhered to a more mustard mat before being added to the card front.

The sentiment was stamped in basic black and wild wasabi on whisper white card stock, edged with soft sky and matted with more mustard before being attached to the card base. So far so ho-hum.


Inside the card is where things get a little more exciting. To decorate the card I stamped the graduation cap again with the hats off to you! sentiment from the Hattitude set (I won this set in a drawing held by my upline during Sale-A- Bration this year -- Thanks Jen! I love it!). I also stamped the congratulations from Birthday Hugs and Wishes, all in basic black.

You can see the money holder peeking out from the word window punched slot. I used the rough edges alphabet to stamp the word "pull" on the tab, just in case the tab alone was not enough of a clue.


When you do pull up the tab you get to the gift! Fun, isn't it? And not exactly complicated, either.


To make this type of card you start with a full 8.5x11 sheet of card stock and score it down the middle in each direction. Then you cut out the lower left hand quadrant and use the word window punch to punch a slot at the bottom of the lower right hand quadrant. Since this side of the lower right hand quadrant won;t be seen, you can actually draw yourself some guidelines to ensure straight punching. For this card I used a 1/2 inch margin from the top and the sides. After the slot was punched I added some sticky strip as shown in the photo.


I then peeled off the red liner tape and folded up the lower right hand quadrant. Now the card looked just like a regular 8.5 x 4.25" card.

I took a 4.75x3" piece of soft sky card stock and rounded all the corners. I then added several tabs using the slit punch. I made 3 tabs at the bottom and 2 at the top, but you could do the same number of tabs on both top and bottom. I punched a round tab piece out of wild wasabi card stock and adhered it to the top of the soft sky card stock. I then punched two 1/16" circles using a handheld punch and inserted two more mustard brads. Then I went back and decorated the card as shown in the photos above.

I'll actually be using this card for my cousin's graduation later this month. Hope he likes it!