Making a Custom Acrylic Cake Topper

Don’t want to read? No worries! There’s a video at the end of the post.

I went to four baby showers in two months this year. There’s got to be something in the water, but I am up to my eyeballs in babies. One of my closest friends is pregnant with her third child, her first girl! We have all been excitedly buying clothes for this (already) spoiled girl, that I totally forgot that even third-time moms have needs! They were about to have three kids living on a teacher’s salary and had no diapers stocked up. I decided to throw her a surprise “diaper shower” to bless this sweet family that I love so dearly. The only problem was I had SIX DAYS to do it.

Enter: My Glowforge and Silhouette Studio

Thanks to my Glowforge, I was able to make several statement pieces for the shower. The day before the shower, I took it upon myself to make a cake and topper to be used at the event. I’ve done some baking before, but never to this magnitude. How hard could it be, right? Spoiler alert: I sent a text to my husband later that day saying “I’m never doing this again.” 😂

For this project, I used the Proofgrade acrylic that was sent to me from Glowforge. If you don’t have it, no worries. I get the majority of my materials from Craft Chameleon.

Step one: Set up the design

I can’t sing the praises of Silhouette Studio Business Edition enough! I am a Silhouette gal through and through, and it makes projects so much easier now that I can design in Business Edition and export my file as an SVG.

I typed both parts of my cake topper out in separate text boxes. This allows me to arrange my words with a slight overlap. For me, personally, I always type words in a separate text box if they are not on the same line. It allows for the most control of your design. I used the popular font, Madina Script Clean, for this design.

Once my text was arranged, I used the rectangle tool to draw two long lines that will be used to place my cake topper. Keep in mind that these lines may be different lengths, depending on where they meet your text.

Once my lines were overlapping my text, I selected my entire design and clicked weld. Last, set your design to the size you are cutting it.

Export as an SVG

Now I was ready to transfer my design to Glowforge. Select your design, go to File>Save As>Save to Hard Drive.

Once you arrive at this window, make sure to choose the location you would like to save the design to and select SVG as your file type. REMEMBER: This is a feature of Silhouette Business Edition only!

Let’s get ready to GLOW!

Place your material into your Glowforge. I used Proofgrade acrylic for this project, so I placed my material with my QR code facing up. This code will be read by my machine and I won’t have to make any setting adjustments!

Next, upload your design to Glowforge design library and open it in your software. You will see your material inside of the machine, with the design overlayed on top. Since I’m using Glowforge material, the top left corner already shows me the type of material we are using.

Choose your design from the left side of your screen. This will open up a window showing you cut options. For this design, we will select cut.

Now we’re ready to send this to our machine! Click Print in the top-right corner of your software. The design will begin processing for your Glowforge. Once the design is completed processing, the button on your machine will glow. Press the magic button!

Once your machine is done, you now have a custom cake topper! I loved using my Proofgrade acrylic for this project because the topper came out like butter.

Tape off the bottom and spray

To finish off my cake topper, I taped the bottom of the rods with painters tape to keep it safe and sprayed the rest of the acrylic with Krylon Glitter Blast. While I dont recommend using this spray for large projects it because it can be expensive, it was perfect for a topper like this!

At the end of the day, I was very pleased with the topper and the cake..but dont examine it too closely!

Acrylic is the perfect medium for cake toppers because they are sturdy and easy to cut. Make sure to check out Craft Chameleon if you searching for nice, quality acrylic! Jamie and her team have been so amazing to work with over the years!

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