DIY Cake Toppers for Birthday & Weddings: Customize Your Own! (2024)

Learn how to make your own DIY cake topper for birthday, weddings, and holidays that are both easy and elegant! Use one of my free topper designs, or make your own with a custom name or phrase to decorate your cake.

My family loves cake. I used to love to bake and decorate cakes, but those days are long behind me at this point. So when I’m responsible for the cake, that means I’m buying one. Sadly, storebought ones are kinda boring, especially when you get the generic ones from the deli case the hour before the party. LOL Sure, you can buy some decorations, but those are generic, too. But what DOES make any cake look magnificent is a CUSTOM CAKE TOPPER! So for Day 9 of The Great Maker 25-Day Gift-Away Challenge, I am showing you how to make DIY cake toppers with custom names and phrases!

What is The Great Maker 25-Day Gift-Away? This is an annual tradition here at JenniferMaker! Every day for the first 25 days of December, we gift you with a brand new project, design, tutorial, and video for something YOU asked us to make. On top of that, we host a giveaway with 25 prizes, everything from Cricut cutting machines (four of them this year!) to project prize packs with all the materials for popular JenniferMaker projects to beautiful print editions of our popular Cricut Coach Playbook. You can even earn bonus entries for making the daily projects! Click here to learn more about The Great Maker 25-Day Gift-Away!

See exactly how to make DIY cake toppersin my tutorial video(or keep scrolling if you prefer a step-by-step photo tutorial):

DIY Cake Toppers for Birthday & Weddings: Customize Your Own! (1)

Now you probably have everything you need already to make a cake topper — just a few sheets of cardstock, some bamboo skewers, and some glue. That’s it. So easy.

You’ll want a way to cut your cake topper — you can use scissors or a craft knife, but I’m using my Cricut cutting machine because it’s way faster and I love using technology to make my life easier.

I’ve even made some cake topper designs for you to use (“Make a Wish,” “Celebrate,” and “Best Day Ever”), along with a template so you can make a cake topper with whatever name or saying you want.

Materials to Make DIY Cake Toppers

View my Amazon shopping list with the exact items we used to make this project!

65 lb.-110 lb. 8.5″ x 11″ cardstock. The heavier weight, the sturdier it will be. Feel free to even use things like poster board, Kraft board, or even veneer.
Decorative paper like glitter cardstock or holographic poster board, which are good choices for the name or phrase
12″ long Bamboo skewers (2 per cake topper)
Tacky glue or adhesive spray
A way to cut your cardstock (I used the amazing Cricut cutting machine!)
StandardGrip cutting mat (the 12″ x 12″ size)
Breaking Bread and Blackfat Script are the two fonts I used from Font Bundles.
Design #175 – My free SVG cake topper files and template (available in my free resource library—get the password by filling out the form at the bottom of this page)

How to Make DIY Cake Toppers with a Pre-Made Design or a Custom Name or Phrase!

Step 1: Get my free DIY Cake Topper Template

Get the free cake topper designs and templates (Design #175)from my free resource library (get the password to the library in the form at the bottom of this post).

Step 2: Prepare Your Cake Topper for Cutting

While you can cut this cake topper by hand with a craft knife, you’ll find it much easier to cut this project on a cutting machine, like a Cricut. To do that, you’ll first upload the SVG design file you downloaded in step 1 to Cricut Design Space. Here’s what my SVG file looks like uploaded to Cricut Design Space:

Tip: If you’re not sure how to upload an SVG cut file to Cricut Design Space, watch this helpful video training series I made. If you’re on an iPhone or iPad, here’s how to download and upload SVG files to the Cricut Design Space app.

The cake topper design is sized to fit on an 8 inch cake or larger. If you need to resize the image to fit a different size cake, do so before you ungroup the designs.

If you’re curious what font I used for my pre-made cake topper designs, I used Breaking Bread and Blackfat Script, both of which are ideal for joining and welding!

Step 3: Cut Out Your Cardstock

Cut out your cardstock layers. Every layer can be the same color, or choose a different contrasting color for your phrase or name to help it stand out!

I recommend you cut two of the wreath layers and one of the sentiment layer in the desired cardstock or glitter paper. If cutting the sentiment only to use as a topper cut two layers of the sentiment. The double layers add stability to the cake topper.

Step 4: Attach Your Cake Topper Layers

Using spray adhesive or glue, attach the layers together. I recommend you attach the two wreath layers, then attach the name or sentiment to the front.

Step 5: Add Bamboo Skewers

You have two options for attaching the skewers, which are necessary for the cake topper to stand atop your cake. You can either glue the skewers to the back of the design, or you can glue the optional ring to the back and slide your skewers through the holes in the rings. Gluing the skewers is a little stronger, but using the ring with holes means you can remove the skewers when the party is over and keep it flat as a keepsake. Your choice!

Get my free DIY Cake Topper templates and cut files

I’d love to see your DIY cake toppers for every occasion! If you make one, please share a photo in our Facebook group, email it to me at [emailprotected], or tag me on social media with #jennifermaker.

And if you’d like to learn how to make LAYERED cake toppers, check out my fun Rainbow and Mermaid layered cake topper tutorial!

Love,

Want to remember this? Save the DIY Cake Topper Tutorial to your favorite Pinterest board!

Jennifer

Jennifer Marx is a designer, an enthusiastic crafter, a lifelong teacher, and a proud overcomer of a variety of life's challenges. In her spare time she loves to play D&D and video games, garden, sew costumes, and go to Disney. She lives a full, happy life in beautiful Ann Arbor, Michigan with her partner Greg, her daughter Alexa, their two dogs, Hunter and Chloe, and their sassy orange cat, Butterscotch.

FAQs

To make these adorable personalized cake toppers, you will need several pieces of cardstock. A custom cake topper is so much fun to customize and you can use whatever paper you want to coordinate with your party theme. I used 65 lb. cardstock in several colors and glitter cardstock for most of the layers.

5” to 1.5” (1.27cm-4cm) or smaller than the diameter of your cake. However, if you want your topper to stand out, then pick a topper that is the same width as your cake or just slightly smaller. We recommend not to go bigger than your cake, regardless of the cake's design.

Once you have your design, print it onto edible paper using an edible printer for cake toppers. Cut out the image using scissors or a craft knife. Be precise to ensure a clean and professional-looking topper. Ready your cake and evenly smooth out the icing before applying the edible cake toppers.

80 lb Cover Cardstock (216 gsm)

This is a medium weight cardstock that is most commonly used for scrapbook layouts and paper cake toppers. The popular Bazzill Basics and American Crafts Cardstock lines are both 85 lb cover weight. This is the most common cardstock weight for all the top brands.

Roll-out icing works best and is also known as sugar paste or fondant. You can also use Royal icing, butter-cream or glace icing.

Wedding cake toppers actually date back hundreds of years. The story behind this tradition states that a baker's daughter wanted her cake to be extra special, so they made a miniature bride and groom for the top of her cake to look like the couple. Obviously, the idea stuck and the cake topper tradition was born.

Does every wedding cake need a cake topper? No. Some styles of wedding cakes look beautiful with a clean top. You can also consider having your cake designer make a full topper of sugar flowers (the benefit is that you can keep them and they are not toxic, as with real flowers).

Canon and Epson inkjet printers are suitable for edible ink cartridges and printing edible ink images. It is essential that only edible ink cartridges are used, and the printer is dedicated to edible printing only. The printer must not have previously used regular ink cartridges as this may cause contamination.

If you are concerned about fading, place the sheet on the cake within an hour of the event. If you are using a cake bought at a bakery with the harder frosting, the image can be placed on at your convenience, but not more than 48 hours prior to the event.

Unlike the usual paper, edible sheets are most commonly made of rice, sugar, starch, and even potatoes! Do you see why these are called edible sheets? They are safe to consume and once applied over a cake, they just dissolve in the frosting, leaving the image on the surface.

Acrylic is a type of plastic that is commonly used in a variety of applications. It is a strong and lightweight material that is easy to shape and cut. Acrylic cake toppers are made from food-grade acrylic, which means that they are safe to use with food.

Cake toppers that are cut on a cutting machine (such as a Cricut), are mainly created out of cardstock paper. You can find cardstock in many different colors, patterns, and glittery finishes. However, the most important thing is to look for heavier cardstock that will help your design stay up and not just flop over.