DIY Cupcake Tower

Good Morning!

I'm excited to share this tutorial with all of you today! My little girl just loves her "berry cake", so for her birthday, I'm trying to stay with a strawberry theme. After searching for a homemade cupcake tower, I finally decided to go my own route, and this is what I came up with. It's pretty easy, but takes about 45 minutes. I think it's worth the time and effort for a custom cupcake tower.

What you need:
Thin cardboard, and pieces large enough to accommodate each circle
Decorative paper (Scrapbook, wrapping, etc...)
Styrofoam block or cylinder
Satin Ribbon
Gorgosian Ribbon
Exacto Knife
Hot Glue Gun
Quick Drying Craft Glue
Plates
Pen

1) Either trace or draw your different sized circles on the cardboard and then also on the paper. We are having a small get together so for us, two tiers will work perfectly. I used a large dinner plate, and then a smaller saucer plate to trace my circles. You could go out and purchase cake boards in the sizes you need, or ask your local pizza place if they have pizza rounds you could buy (the later would probably be cheaper). I chose to make my own rounds by cutting them out with an exacto knife. It helps to go over the pen lines once with medium pressure (also called "scoring", and then going over those lines again to cut threw the piece. Use the exacto knife for the paper as well. If you use cake boards, or pizza rounds, use those to trace onto the paper before cutting.

2) Glue the paper to the cardboard. I used a quick drying craft glue, and started in the center and worked my way around the edges to make sure it stayed smooth.

3) Get your Styrofoam and cut it to the desired shape and size. We only had square pieces, so I cut them down, and glued two together to form the base between the two tiers. If the Styrofoam is a little uneven on the ends, fill the gaps in with glue from your hot glue gun and let harden.

Here's a picture of the two pieces glued together

4) Measure out how much gorgosain ribbon you'll need by wrapping it around the edge of each cardboard piece. Using your hot glue gun, gradually glue the ribbon along the edges. I also used a lighter to burn the end pieces of the ribbon to seal them off.

You should end up with something like this.

5) Take your satin ribbon and glue it down so that the edges line up with the Styrofoam piece, and wrap around until it covers all of the Styrofoam. Glue down the end pieces so that it stays secure. I used the hot glue gun for this as well.

This is an example of my almost finished riser.

6) Finally, hot glue gun the satin wrapped Styrofoam in the center of your base cardboard circle, and then hot glue gun the smaller cardboard circle on top. To make this larger, just continue in the same fashion for smaller or larger circles.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial! I can't wait to use it this weekend! I'll be sure to share pictures with actual cupcakes on it :)

Take care,

~Lisa