How to Make Minnie Mouse Cake Topper

Look how cute this cake topper turned out!  See my below tips as well as the mistakes I made along the way so you don't make them too!

This was a little trickier than others that I have made because of course I choose the hardest paper to cut out.

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1. Design your cake topper in Design Space. For Minnie Mouse I welded circles together to make the head. then copied and pasted those 3 more times for the smaller one. For the outer rings you add two circles, one bigger than the other, then make sure to highlight both circles, center them, then slice them. Delete the layers you don't need so you just have the one ring. I like to add a lot of dimension to my designs so I use the "Offset" feature a lot. You can increase the layer so it's a size bigger or decrease the layer so it's a size smaller. I prefer to make the ring the size I want, then use Offset and decrease the next ring and do this again so you have 3 ring sizes. When I did the number two in the middle I did the opposite. Add text, type in "2" then pick a font you like. Once you find one, hit offset and slide the scale to find a size bigger that you like. I made four layers for that image. I did that same thing for the name on the bottom. For the banner you can look in Design Space Image Library and search "banner," choose the one you want and add it to your canvas. I did draw my own bow from the app Procreate on my iPad and added it to my project but there are some images in Design Space you can use.

**TIP: If making a shaker you will want to make a circle the same size as the first ring but make sure it's a full circle, not sliced. Use acetate when cutting this layer out. Then I cut two foam pieces that are the size of the first ring (bottom layer of rings) using craft foam and hot glue those two pieces together. This will give you space to add beads, sequins, etc. to the shaker. 

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2. Grab all the types of paper you want to use, the acetate sheet, foam tape and hot glue.

 

3. Cut out the images you added to Design Space using your Cricut. I like to manually choose which

layer to cut instead of going in order the way Design Space has it as they organize it by color. I tend to

start with the back layer and work my way to the front layer and glue as I go. This way you don't get

confused where one image goes. This might take a bit longer but trust me, it keeps you more sane as

you go!

**TIP: When cutting the acetate and craft foam, if using, make sure to turn the Cricut dial to Custom. On the computer it will ask what material you are cutting. Make sure to choose the correct one when cutting that material. 

**TIP: If using glitter paper or poster board type paper; before you unload the mat from the Cricut, check to make sure it cut all the way through before unloading it. If it did not, click the "C" to cut it again so it cuts the image exactly how it just did. If you unload the mat and try to load it and cut it again, it's almost impossible to cut on the same lines again.

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4. Like I mentioned, I like to glue pieces together as I go so that I don't lose track of what pieces go

together. At this time you can decide which pieces you want to add foam glue to give your design some

dimension. I like to do this with all of the offset layers. See picture to the right.

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5. When assembling the shaker, take the paper that will be the back then hot glue it to the two foam

rings you have cut out. Add the beads, sequins, etc. to the shaker. Then take your acetate layer and hot

glue that onto the foam rings. Make sure there are no gaps between any of the layers so the shaker

pieces don't fall out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6. I did not do this part on this cake topper because we did not do a cake for this party, we did cakesicles.  If you do want to stick this into a cake, then before adding the back two layers, hot glue your cake stick to the back. Once that is glued down, use foam tape to put the last two layers on. This will hide the top of the stick in the design and won't look tacky from the back. 

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 Learn from my Mistakes:

#1: Do glitter paper at the end of the project as ALL the glitter sticks to the mat and it's a pain to get it off if you still need to do cardstock. OR use two different mats, one for cardstock and one for glitter paper.

#2: Use a different blade for glitter paper. I feel like every time I cut glitter paper it dulls the blade so that when I switch back to cardstock it doesn't cut as well. OR you can cut the image twice before unloading the mat if you want to save money on blades.

#3: I highly suggest only using chunky glitter paper for non complex images. Simple shapes like a circle is fine but the finer details just do not turn out very well. After using this pink chunky paper I found at Michaels Craft Store, a lot of the glitter fell off of the paper after cutting it with the Cricut machine.