5 Minute Paper Cake Toppers Using Your Old Art
Today is my daughter’s 18th birthday, and so after 18 years of raising her and throwing birthday parties with lots of homemade decorations and cute DIY cakes I got it together rather at the last minute and pulled off a really cute birthday surprise complete with lots of recycling crafts that I can’t wait to share. The thing is, tonight is the beginning of a very sad 9 day mourning period on the Jewish calendar, so while I’m posting the DIY birthday cake decorations today, I think the rest will have to wait until after T’isha B’av so that my blog reflects what is actually going on in our minds and hearts during this time. My daughter was fortunate to have been born on the last day of the month of Tammuz, when throwing a birthday party (without music) is still allowed, so phew for her!
Now, lets get down to business! I have always made paper cake toppers using illustrations and cut paper with skewers or toothpicks, so why stop now? My daughter is now the baker in the house, and while she thought of baking her own cake, she didn’t have time, so I sent my son up to the bakery to buy one, so that I could spend my time on the decorations! Things were a bit pressed for time, and when I had completed everything, whoops, what about the cake? I almost thought of not decorating the cake, but banished that thought and instead whipped up some five minute cloud cake decorations using a gouche cloud illustration I had on hand from two years ago!
The lesson here is, don’t throw away all those art experiments or practice sheets, you can always cut them up to make cake decorations! And boy was I happy at the moment I realized I could just cut out some of the painted clouds, write a few words on them and voila, a cute cake topper was born! Okay, lets take a look at the gouche art I used (or something similar, actually) and get to work!
You’ll Need:
- old art that has no purpose, great if it is a gouche illustration with shapes that you can cut out
- toothpicks
- tape (mine is washi tape, so it looks cute from the back too)
- a black marker of some kind
- scissors
How To:
- If you don’t have any old art hanging around, so paint a cloud illustration using gouche or watercolors or acrylic paint, similar to the one below, that I did in my sketchbook, a few years back.
- Cut out the shapes and write your messages on them, a few cloud clusters, plus single clouds works really well, and of course you could make large clouds if you prefer, or a greater range of sizes, certainly.
- Tape toothpicks or skewers onto the backs of the clouds, and voila, cute as can be!
This is not the illustration that I cut up, fortunately I had done the same thing on a piece of watercolor paper, which was the right weight and just begging to be used for something! And just by the way, this illustration was created via a daily illustration course on creativebug.com by Lisa Congdon, who is a genius of a playful illustrator, totally recommend her classes!
Okay friends, now that I’ve made hoarders out of you, go and use all that stuff you’ve been hoarding. Those little scraps of pink are from the plastic bag pom poms I made for the party, and which are amazing…..stay tuned for that in another 9 days, though I may post a tutorial about how to make plastic bag yarn in the mean time, so save those plastic bags. If your area or the world, , like mine, unfortunately has not banned them at least we can craft with them!
