When trying to think about what to give our nephew for his
high school graduation, I remembered a friend of mine telling me about all the
creative ways she gave money gifts to her grandchildren. I asked her where she
came up with such great ideas. Her response was, “Pinterest, of course!” so off
I went to search on
Pinterest. After
clicking on several pictures and reading tutorials, I came up with several
ideas of my own. I will share links at the bottom of this post for some of the
tutorials I read.
After a trip to the bank for $1.00 bills and my local
Walmart for Styrofoam circles, I was ready to begin. At first, I was
disappointed I hadn’t asked the bank teller for new $1.00 bills but discovered
after rolling the bills, it really didn’t matter what condition the money was
in. Rolling the money was VERY time consuming. My first attempt produced uneven
size rolls. Back to Pinterest I went and found a tutorial suggesting using a
pencil to roll the bills. Using the pencil produced evenly rolls bills and I
was on a roll at this point. Let me back up a minute. Before I could start
rolling the bills, I needed to do some prep work. I used a dinner size round plate and a salad
size round plate and traced the plate circles onto the Styrofoam using a black
marker pen. Then I used my electric knife to cut out the circles. If an
electric knife is not available, a large serrated knife will work to cute the
circles. After measuring my finished circles, I used my SCAL (Sure Cuts A lot) software
to make draw circles the same size as my Styrofoam circles and then cut out
colored card stock with my Cricut die cut machine. I used golden yellow card stock
matching the theme colors of the high school – yellow gold and navy. Next, I
hot glued the card stock circles to the Styrofoam circles and let them dry.
Roll the money using the pencil method. I used $1.00 bills
and made 100 rolls but you can use any denomination of money. After you
complete a roll, stick a small straight pink through the roll about ¼” from the
top of the roll. This is hard to do but with patience and persistence, the pin
will go through the roll. I attached each roll to the Styrofoam circle as I
finished them. Watching a T.V. show or listening to music make this part go
faster!
The rolled money filled the bottom layer so I covered the top layer
with ribbon taping the ends together. The ribbon could be glued on the edge of
the Styrofoam disc but mine was just snuggly taped together.
The finishing touches were the most fun! The hat topper was
made from a rectangle of dark blue cardstock and a square of cardstock. The
dimensions for these two shapes will depend on the size of your cake. The
rectangle was taped together and the square was glued on top of the rectangle.
Gold cotton embroidery floss was used to make the tassel. You can purchase a
tassel if you don’t want to create your own. The shapes and letters for the
year logo were designed in my die cut software and cut with my Cricut machine.
They were glued onto the “cake”.
The top cake layer was filled in with folded and pinned left
over money.
The Money Cake was fun to create but very time
consuming. It took all afternoon to finish. The end result………………our nephew was
thrilled with his cake! Sorry, I didn't get a picture of the look on my nephew's face when he opened his gift.
Supplies Needed:
Some type of base for the finished product. I used a 12”
cardboard cake round but you can use anything you want.
Styrofoam Discs: 1 10” and 1 12”
Straight Pin: 100 to 150. Some of the pins will bend while
pushing through the money so buy extra pins.
Money: I used 100 $1.00 bills but you can use any
denomination you prefer and the number of bills will be determined by the size
cake you make.
Pencil
Hot Glue gun and glue sticks
Cardstock in the color(s) of your choice
Ribbon: I used 2 different sized ribbon and layered them.
Floral ribbon worked great for me. I used wide widths and cut it down to the
sizes I needed.
Die Cut machine such as one of the Cricut or Silhouette
brands. I have a Cricut Expression and that is what I used.
Die cutting software or cartridges to cut the cardstock
circles and lettering for the cake topper.
Plates for tracing
Pencil, pen, or marker for tracing
Cotton Floss for tassel or purchased tassel
Button – 1 for top of hat
Clear tape
I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and find it useful. Here are the links to the
tutorial I used:
Other ideas on Pinterest:
https://www.pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=graduation%20gift%20money%20cake&rs=typed&term_meta[]=graduation%7Ctyped&term_meta[]=gift%7Ctyped&term_meta[]=money%7Ctyped&term_meta[]=cake%7Ctyped
