July 29 2023

DIY Flower Cake Topper

When it comes to throwing a birthday party, baby shower or retirement celebration…the cake is such an important part. But, it can be a budget-buster if you’re not careful. Don’t let that keep you from having a beautiful cake to display and share, though. I’ve got some DIY Flower Cake Toppers that are easy to put together, affordable to make and simple to remove when it’s time to enjoy! And, I’ve got a story to tell about broken cakes, leaning cake stands and how everything turned out!

Materials

For this project, I was decorating two cakes: one 10″ and one 8″. One cake had a gold “happy birthday” topper. I decided to create one small and one large floral topper.

3 Rose Stems (3 flower pieces + leaves on each)
1 Single Rose Stem (large rose)
1 Eucalyptus Stem
1 Pack of Flat Wood Circles
1 Floral Spray/Stem (I used a pampas grass spray look-alike, but blossoms, ferns or baby’s breath are all great options!)
Hot glue gun
Wire snips/scissors

materials for the small floral diy cake topper

*One big way to save money is to shop the on sale/clearance florals…the selection can be limited, but as long as you get coordinating colors, you don’t need much.

The Small Flower Cake Topper

To create this small cake topper, I used two springs of the eucalyptus, one of the 3 piece rose stems, several leaf sections from the roses, all glued to one wooden circle.

Start by shaping the eucalyptus stems. Because this greenery sits in the “propped up” position, you’ll have to cut the stems longer, so they can reach the circle shape with enough length to be glued down on each side.

I chose one flat rose leaf section for the middle, and two more smaller ones to flank each side of the center one. Repeat the same on the black side.

The largest of the three rose set will get glued in the middle.

The smaller rose can be placed along the back side, off-center, with the rose bud on the opposite off-center side.

This is the piece that will be placed on the top cake, with the “Happy Birthday” sign.

Now for the second cake…

The Large Flower Cake Topper

For the other flower cake topper, I knew it had to cover the entire top of the cake. To make it larger, I chose to use two wooden circles, with the idea of overlapping them in the middle–and gluing together. I used the same materials that I used for the small one, but this is where I added in the one large rose and faux pampas grass sprigs. I went with several springs of the eucalyptus, 2 of the 3 piece rose stems & several leaf sections from the roses.

The steps for this one are similar…I added side eucalyptus pieces first. Then, I glued the rose “greenery” on each side.

I overlapped the circles in the middle and connected them with hot glue…

The large rose was placed in the center.

I added pink roses on each side of the center rose…I chose two different sized pink roses to add a mix, instead of making it completely symmetrical.

Small eucalyptus sprigs were placed throughout the “bouquet.”

Across the back, I had added greenery and roses, but I also added these faux pampas grass. What you should know–Although it “looks” furry, it’s not. It’s some kind of optical illusion–I wasn’t interested in having pampas grass all over the cake.

Here they both are, small and large, ready to go on the two-tiered cake stand. I thought everything was going so well. Because we were out of town, I had this stand ordered form Amazon. Beautiful, right? After we put it together, we noticed it leaning terribly to one side. I was very annoyed, but kind of stuck, since there was no time to buy a different one. To the party we went!

Disaster #2…Due to the Texas heat, we picked up the cakes, but by the time they got to the venue, they were breaking apart. Luckily, we had our fancy cake toppers to cover up the damage! You can see in the photo that the frosting is basically melting off the side. Yikes. I took some quick pictures, we sang Happy Birthday, and I got busy cutting them up!