Beautify Your Wedding Cake: Make Your Own Monogram Cake Topper

Monograms are hot right now, and it is no wonder – monograms are an easy way to add elegance to any wedding décor for a minimum of cost. Cake toppers with a monogram letter look great on any wedding cake, and replace the traditional bride and groom with another symbol that has just as much of a traditional look.

Making a cake topper is pretty easy, even for the craft-challenged. However, for busy brides-to-be, this is a great project to assign to a crafty friend as well. Following is a how-to for making your very own wedding cake monogram topper.

YOU'LL NEED:

- Cardboard, cardstock, or foam core board

- An exacto knife

- A pencil

- A ball point pen

- Aluminum foil

- Optional: acrylic paint in gold, silver or any color that matches your wedding theme

- Paint brush (optional)

- Glue dots

- Glue made for adhering gems

- Flat-backed crystals or flat-back pearls in your color choice

- Two or more wooden toothpicks or coffee stirrers

DIRECTIONS:

1. Using the script font in a word processor program or a Photoshop-type program, print the letter or letters of your choice. Use the program to enlarge the letter size so that it prints out at about four ½ inches tall.
2. Print the letter out, and turn it face down. Then, use the pencil to draw over the entire backside of the letter. Color as much as possible – you are creating "carbon paper" to trace the design with.
3. Turn the design face up; place it on the cardboard or other material for your letter. Trace the outline of your letter with the ballpoint pen. If you colored the paper on the back thoroughly enough, you should see your drawing transferred to the cardboard.
4. Use the exacto knife to cut the cardboard letter shape out. If using cardstock or thin cardboard, you may want to do two or three layers and glue them together to give the letter strength. One layer of foam core board should be fine.
5. Add either the toothpicks or the coffee stirrers to the bottom of the letter by gluing them in between cardstock layers, or putting glue on them and pushing them into the core board. This is what will keep the letter standing up on the top of the cake.
6. Next, add the base color to the letter in one of two ways:

• Put glue dots on the front and back of the letter. Lay a sheet of aluminum foil on the front, and another on the back. Cut away the excess, and fold the edges around the letter. Glue them down if they will not stay down on their own.
• Using non-toxic acrylic paint, paint the letter the desired color and let dry.

Now you are ready for the gems! Start gluing your flat-back crystals to the letter. Cover the whole letter; just outline the edges, use a few different colors of crystals – go crazy!

• Optional – test your monogram cake topper on a regular cake before the big day, to see how the size of it looks, as well as how it stays up, and if it needs any more support.

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