My Valentine, a.k.a my husband, always requests a cake for Valentines Day. This year I wanted to decorate it more than the normal chocolate covered strawberries or cherries. Using a cutting machine and Cardstock Warehouse paper, you can decorate any cake or dessert for your Valentine!
SUPPLIES
- Cardstock Warehouse Cardstock Papers
- Starch White Speckletone 100lb Paper
- Mars Stardream 105lb Paper
- Gold Touch Sparkle 104lb Paper
- Two paper straws or sticks
- Cutting Machine
- Zig Glue Pen
- Hot Glue Gun
- Twine or string
GETTING STARTED
First you are going to want to think about what you want your banner to say. Remember the longer the saying, the wider your cake topper will be. If you are making a simple 9” round cake, a shorter saying may be better. Once you know what you want your banner to say you will want to choose a font to cut your saying out in. I used the font Love Affair. I thought it was fitting. I then typed out “Be Mine” on my canvas in design space, changed the font color to gold and isolated the letters. Next I chose a banner piece, changed the color and changed the size. Since my cake is a 9” round cake, I measured each banner pendant to measure 1.1”x1.6”. I then duplicated this one time and used the weld option. This is going to give you your back pieces for each pendant. Make sure you change the color to what you are wanting if it has change the color to something else. You will then want to duplicate both pendant pieces as many letters you are going to have. I needed 7 for my topper, having one extra for the heart in between “Be” and “Mine”. It’s now time to take each letter and put them one by one on a banner piece. While doing this, you can adjust the size of each letter to fit in the middle of each piece. Now that your banner is designed, you will next choose an image that will go on top of your straws. Since I am using Cricut Design Space, you can choose just about any Valentines design. For this project I used a simple heart measuring 2.2”x2.1”.
CONSTRUCTING YOUR CAKE TOPPER
Once your design is ready to be sent to your mats, you will want to choose the paper you want. For this project, I used Gold Touch, Starch White and Mars.
You are now ready to cut! To cut these pieces I set my cut dial to poster board +. This will cut through your thick cardstock with ease.
After each piece is cut out, start gluing your banner pieces together. I used Zig 2 way glue. This nifty little glue pen makes gluing tiny pieces together a breeze!
After you have glued your banner pieces together, it is now time to assemble them onto your ribbon. Since my pendants holes are tiny, I’m using a red crafting twine measuring ⅛”. Cut your twine or ribbon to measure how wide your banner will hang. String each piece onto your twine or ribbon giving a little space between each pendant piece. Now glue your back on to each piece.
Assembling the banner onto the straw is the easiest step. Take your banner and lay it flat out. Take one straw and add a little drop of hot glue to the very top. Quickly attach and adjust one end of the twine or ribbon to the straw. Do the same for the other side making sure your banner is placed evenly between the two straws.
Once that is dry you are going to want to attach your images to the top of each straw. You can do this by adding hot glue to the back of each piece and placing it over the straw where your twine or ribbon is connected. Once this is dry you can cut off any extra twine or ribbon as well as the little strings hot glue tends to leave behind.
Now the fun part. Decorating your cake! Just place the end of each straw on each end of the cake. You can make it where your banner hangs just a tad or make it hang straight across. It just depends on the placement of your straws.
Voila! You now have a cake topper to use to decorate your dessert and impress your Valentine!
Making your own cake topper? We would love to see your wonderful creations! Be sure to show us on Facebook or Instagram!
-Miriam from Miri’s Party House