Baby Boy Birthday Cake Topper

Have some more birthday cake!!  Here’s the paper cake topper that goes along with my last post for a Baby Boy Birthday card.  I saw these printables for a paper jungle train…usually they are used for favor boxes at a party…but I thought I could shrink them down and use them for a cake topper, just for something different for a One Year Birthday cake.

You can find the jungle animals and paper carts for downloading here at Paperglitter.  As I mentioned in my last post, I used 2 kits, the colorized version and the blank Color-Me version….I felt like mixing and matching!  First I printed out the color-me carts on kraft paper, shrinking them down to 45%.  The colorized animals I printed at 48% to get them just a tad larger.  

You can customize the text, so I wrote something different on each cart.  On one side of the first cart was HAPPY HAPPY, and on the other side of the same cart it said FELIZ FELIZ.  the next cart said BIRTHDAY and CUMPLEANOS.  So each cart had the English on one side and the Spanish on the other…so later on I could decide which side I wanted to have facing the front.  I don’t know why, but I put the English side facing out….here’s the back view, I should have done it the other way around!!  Oh well, everyone at the party spoke both languages! 🙂In planning it all out, it helped to jot down a plan (so I wouldn’t mess something up!), like which animal was going with with word on which cart!  After cutting out the carts, sticking the edges together with double sided tape,  I printed out the color-me  jungle leaves on light green cardstock and cut them out.  For the wheels, I decided to use my new button punch and a solid color cardstock instead of the printable wheels.  Here’s the button punch/embosser (from Martha Stewart) I love it!:After assembling the carts and cutting out the animals, I taped each animal onto a toothpick and then taped one inside of each cart.  Then before I glued the wheels on I taped a toothpick (the flat kind) to the back of each cart, right where a wheel would go, and stuck the wheel on over it.  (note: also a good idea to plan out which side of each cart the toothpick should go!) Back view:(I was in a rush, that’s why the tape is visible.  The best way would be to glue, or maybe even hot glue, everything on with time for them to dry, then you wouldn’t see any tape!)  Here’s the front of the cart:After the four carts are all assembled with wheels and animals, then make your cake!! haha.  Long pause…………I wanted 2 different sized layers, since I wasn’t sure if the whole jungle train would fit across the 6 inch layer cake. ( The cake ended up being yellow and light teal alternating layers inside).  I was trying reallly hard to match the icing color up with the cardstock wheel color!!

After the cake was iced,  I carefully stuck each little cart on.  Some of them could have probably used 2 toothpicks to help stabilize them, but I just tried to push the wheels of the end carts into the sides of the cake!Without too much rearranging, I was pleased with the “random” train across the cake.  Looks like they are going for a wild ride!When the carts were pushed into the cake, I joined them up with the little jungle leaves (with little slits cut into them).I photographed the cake at home, and then took it to the party….not realizing how windy is was outside!!  The little paper train shifted a bit, but we were able to get it to the party intact!!  (Just a few leaves needed to be stuck back on).

Oh yes, don’t forget to add the Birthday Boy’s name and age!!The birthday boy seemed happy with his jungle animal train cake!!  Happy First Birthday!!