Graduation caps · 2026

You have a superpower

…and it's called empathy. An anatomical heart blooming with flowers, painted for Andreea.

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Andreea wearing the finished cap at her graduation: a red anatomical heart with pink flowers and the words “You have a superpower and it's called empathy”.

The story

Andreea fell for a cap she found on Pinterest, a heart with flowers growing out of it like a vase, but she loved the words from a different cap. So she sent me both: the design from one, the text from the other. Fitting them together was up to me.

My first draft put the text too low, and it looked off-centre. (I jokingly asked if we could just delete a word.) Instead I erased the whole text and started again until all of it sat nicely next to the heart.

The most fun part was the blending. The heart needed a lot of it so the shadows and very subtle highlights felt cohesive, and on the flowers I blended pink at the petal edges into white at the centres. A little Angelus 2-Soft made the paint more liquid, so the colours melted into each other even more nicely.

Process

01Two Pinterest references: the design from one, the words from another
02Paper sketch, then redrawn when the first text sat too low
03Sketch transferred onto the cap in white
04White base layers under everything
05Colour, with lots of blending on the heart and petals
06Heart and flower details
07Clean-up and sharper edges with black paint
08Angelus flat finisher, in case it rained on the day

What I learned

Angelus 2-Soft thins the paint and keeps it flexible. Great for blending, terrible for sharp details, and caps don't need to bend anyway, so most details ended up in bare paint.
Mixed 1:1 with 2-Soft, my white base was so thin the black cap soaked it up. Some of the lettering took about seven layers.
The graduation was outdoors in a park, so both caps got a coat of Angelus flat finisher, just in case it rained.

See the post on Instagram →

Gallery

Andreea, seen from behind on graduation day, wearing the cap on a flower-covered swing.

The cap on Andreea's head at the graduation, in natural light.

Angled close-up of the heart, flowers and white lettering.

Close-up of the blended red heart with pink flowers and white dots.

Close-up of the pink-and-white blended flower petals.

The finished cap photographed flat against a light background.

Making of

A pencil sketch on paper held over the cap, with the text faint and low. — First paper sketch. The text sat too low and looked off-centre.

A redrawn paper sketch with bolder text placed beside the heart. — Redrawn from scratch, so the words fit next to the heart.

The design transferred in thin white lines onto the cap. — The sketch transferred onto the cap in white.

The design partly filled with white base paint. — White base layers going in.

Close-up of white lettering on black fabric, still uneven. — The lettering a few layers in. The cap soaked up so much white.

The whole design painted in white. — The whole design in white.

First pink tones going onto the heart and flowers. — Colour starts going on.

Close-up of the heart in a flat pink base colour with dark vein lines. — The heart's base colour, before the blending.

The cap with all base colours down. — All the colours down.

The heart with shading and veins detailed. — Heart details: veins, shadows and highlights.

The cap with detailed flowers around the heart. — Flower details, pink edges blended into white centres.

The finished cap against a light background. — Finished.

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