DIY Graduation Cake Topper {Easily Customize for any Year!}

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Make your graduate this graduation shaker cake topper to personalize their cake. This graduation cake topper can easily be customized for any year, making it the perfect graduation decor.

Follow along with this step-by-step tutorial to learn how to make this graduation cake topper. For more graduation gift and decoration ideas, search all of my Cricut Graduation projects.

Graduation Cake Topper

In this step-by-step tutorial, you’ll learn how to design this shaker cake topper in Cricut Design Space! You’ll be able to take the design techniques that you learn here to create shaker cake toppers for any occasion.

Supplies Needed:

• Medium to Heavy Weight Cardstock – I am using this double-sided gold glitter cardstock and 12×12 medium weight cardstock.
• Cricut Maker or Explore Cutting Machine and your standard cutting mat.
• .007″ thick craft plastic – this is the craft plastic that I use.
• Glue – This Bearly Art craft glue is my favorite glue for paper crafts, and I will also be using hot glue for the stick.
• Foam tape – I recommend using a thin width foam tape like 1/8″ or 1/4″ which you can find here.
• Variety of star sequins and glitter.
• Decorative lollipop sticks

How to Make a Graduation Shaker Cake Topper

Watch the full step-by-step video tutorial to learn how to make this Graduation cake topper here:

Open Cricut Design Space and create a new project. To make the base of your shaker cake topper, use the shapes icon to add a star shape. Resize this to the size that you want your cake topper. I made the width of mine 8 inches. Duplicate this layer so you have 2 stars.

One of these stars will be the back of your cake topper and the other you will use the clear plastic to cut so you will need to make the stars 2 different colors.

Duplicate this star layer again, two more times. Resize one of the stars so that it’s smaller than the other and place the smaller star on top of the larger star. Select both stars and click “Align” and “Center” to center the stars.

Then, select both stars and select “combine” and “subtract” to slice the smaller star out. This will be the border for your star. I am using black paper for this piece.

Repeat the steps to create another border if you want to add the gold star outline on top of the black star outline like I am doing. This time, make sure the outline for the star is smaller than the black one.

At this point, you should have two star shapes of identical size and two star outlines. The height and width should be the same for all 4 of these.

Next, create your text and line it up as you want it on your cake topper. Then, select all of your text together and weld it together. And then, select the offset tool to add an offset.

You can use the contour tool to fill in any gaps in the offset layer. Just click on the offset layer, select “contour” and click on any of the gaps in the contour window to fill those in. Click “x” to close the window when you are done.

Tips for Cutting Your Pieces

Once you have everything sized and lined up just the way you like it, you can cut out all of your pieces. If you are using the same material that I am, here are a few notes for cutting them:

• For the clear plastic, I find that the poster board setting works best.
• Make sure to use a very sticky mat for the double-sided gold glitter cardstock. If you don’t have a sticky mat, then use masking tape to tape around the edges so the cardstock stays in place.

Assembling the Graduation Cake Topper

Line the bottom part of your cake topper using the foam tape. Make sure that the star is completely lined and there are no gaps. Then remove the backing from the sticky part.

Pour in the glitter and/or sequins that you plan to use. The more you use, the less it will move around. So the amount you use will just depend on the look you are going for.

Then attach the clear star layer on top. You can add a little glue over the foam tape. I like to do this to make sure it’s not going anywhere.

Glue down both of your star outlines. Start with gluing down the black layer. This is going to cover where you see the foam tape. Then glue the gold star outline on top.

Then, glue your letters to the offset layer and attach this to the front of your shaker cake topper.

Once everything is dry, glue your lollipop stick to the back of your graduation cake topper. Depending on how heavy your cake topper is, you can either glue one stick down the middle or 2 with one on each side.

More Cricut Graduation Ideas You’ll Love!

Looking for graduation gift ideas, graduation shirts and other fun graduation crafts that you can make with your Cricut? Here you will find my most popular graduation crafts.

• Cricut Graduation Shirt Ideas
• Graduation Explosion Box
• K-12 Graduation Banner
• Pop-Up Graduation Card
• Graduation Cap Gift Card Holder
• Educated AF Wine Glass (for the college students!)

Before you go, don’t forget to save this tutorial so you can easily come back to it anytime!