Impress everyone by adding some sparkle and personalization to the birthday cake at your next birthday bash. I’ll show you how to make a quick and easy personalized glitter cake topper using your Cricut or Silhouette and an acrylic cake topper blank. 

This is such a fun project because it’s quick (active time spent not including drying time) and easy. I find with glitter it’s hard to make mistakes. As long as you have some sort of game plan, even accidents look great. 

Step 1 – Gather Materials and Prepare Your Cake Topper Blank

I find it’s easiest to gather all your materials first and have them ready. I like to work on a silicone mat because -well – glitter. It makes clean up so much easier. You can use paper, but since you are also working with an adhesive, that can get a little sticky. 

Any good acrylic cake topper blank will come with a protective coating. Peel that coating off of one side (leave the back on to help keep it clean until you are ready to use it.) Also you will want to apply painters tape to the top of the stem of the acrylic cake topper. This keeps it clean from adhesive and glitter. 

Step 2 – Add Glitter & Foil to Your Acrylic Cake Topper

Adhesive – I use CrystaLac Grand Finale to put the glitter on my cake topper. Why? Because it’s non-toxic (no gloves or mask needed), so easy to use and it has a great resin like look. Now keep in mind, I’m not using it according to instructions. I’m just using two coats and applying it thicker than recommended. But for this project not following the rules works just fine with the Grand Finale. If you are using it for a tumbler, I recommend following the directions. If you don’t have Grand Finale, you can also use Mod Podge or any type of liquid glitter glue. 

So, now that we have our adhesive selected, spread the adhesive over one side of your cake topper. Make sure you take it out to the edges and coat everything evenly. 

Middle Glitter  – The first glitter I apply is what I call my transition band. I use a chunkier glittler (tinsel). I spread it sparsley in a band over the middle section. It’s where my two other fine glitters will meet.

Top Glitter – Next I take my darker pink fine glitter and sprinkle it on the top part of the cake topper. Make sure you coat it nice and thick so there are no see throughs from the other side. As I get closer to the middle transition glitter band, I lighten up on the thickness just a little bit so it starts to transition in. You can do this by lifting the glitter container higher and shaking it less. 

Gold Foil Flakes – I’ve tried a couple of different methods of adding gold foil flakes. I originally started by riping them into smaller pieces and putting them on with tweezers. It looked a little too deliberate. Finally I decided to put a little of my Grand Finale (or Mod Podge) in a small cup. I love these silicone cups because they are easy to clean up and reusable. Take a coule large flakes and drop them directly into your adhesive. Stir and break / grind the gold foil flakes up. You want to create different sized foil flakes. 

Next, pour the adhesive / foil mixture onto the bottom portion of your cake topper below the middle band. You want to spread it out so it’s not too thick because it’ll take forever to dry if it is. 

Bottom Glitter – The soft pink glitter I put on the bottom is almost see thru which I love because it adds texture and shine but still looks light and highlights those gold foil flakes. So next, in the bottom space where there is no glitter, cover it with soft pink glitter. This goes right over the gold foil flakes. Make sure it’s well coated.

Dry Time – Let this dry for two hours or according to the dry time for your adhesive. Since my gold foil section was a little thicker, it took my Grand Finale between 2 – 3 hours to dry. 

Step 3 – Add a Top Coat

Once your first coat of adhesive is dry you want to add one more coat of adhesive to seal in all the glitter. We don’t want crunchy glitterly birthday cake pieces. To do this spread another coat over top of your glitter. Make sure it’s thick enough to cover and seal in the glitter. Let that dry for 2 hours or until it’s totally dry.

Step 4 – Add the Personalized Decal

Now that we have a dry and gorgeous sparkling cake topper, we are going to personalize it.

Prepare the Cake Topper – First, flip over the cake topper. We are going to apply the vinyl to the opposite side. Take a look at the different layers of glittler you created. You can see them all from this side. Gorgeous! Next, peel off that second protective coating. This is the side we are going to apply the vinyl to (not the side with our glitter). 

FREE SVG – I have created a free Happy Birthday SVG to share with you. Once you click on the link for the download, the SVG will pop up, right click and Save As to save it to your computer. Now you can bring it into Cricut Design Space like you normally would. Once it’s uploaded to Design Space, you can Ungroup the SVG. Here you can personalize it. Feel free to delete the “To You” and replace it with a name. If you want to fonts to match, delete “Happy” and write it in the same font as the name. Or leave it as it is. Whatever works for you. If you are using the SVG as is, please be sure to “Attach” it  in Design Space before you cut it out so it’s in the right order. 

My cake topper is 5 inch round. However, you will notice I have sized the SVG for 7 inches. This is because of the tails on birthday.  I want them to hang over the sides. I will trim them later. I want my SVG to be large enough that it takes up a good amount of space on my cake topper so plan accordingly. 

Vinyl – Of course you can use whatever vinyl you wish to personalize your acrylic cake topper. I selected a white matte vinyl. The cake topper is so sparkly I wanted something with a matte finish so it would stand out.

Next, cut out and weed the SVG. Then, put it on your transfer tape. Next, apply the vinyl decal to your Cake Topper. Remember to put it on the side with no glitter. 

Apply the vinyl decal and rub it down well onto the cake topper. Carefully remove the transfer tape. Those tails on the “b” and “y” can be tricky so go slowly around them. 

Next, you will want to cut the tails off using either scissors or an Xacto Knife. 

And that’s it. You have created a gorgeous sparkling glitter acrylic cake topper. Perfect for any birthday. You can change glitter colors and still follow the same pattern of application. So be creative and go wow that special person on their birthday!