How to Make a DIY Hot Air Balloon Birthday Cake Topper

It’s surprisingly easy to create a beautiful, professional-looking birthday cake topper with a Cricut machine. I’ll show you how I made this hot air balloon topper that made the perfect adornment for our daughter’s 1st birthday cake.

You guys! It still hasn’t completely sunken in yet, but our baby is 1! I thought I knew all about how “time flies” until having a baby… the first year flew by like nothing I’ve ever experienced. There have been so many emotions surrounding her birthday… of course the pure joy she brings into our lives each day and the excitement with which we see her little adorable personality bloom before our eyes. But there has also been some mixed emotions… our baby isn’t a baby anymore! Each milestone we celebrate also represents the last time she will do (fill in the blank). Of course to celebrate such an epic year we had to plan an epic 1st birthday party!

A month later and I’m finally getting over the exhaustion from all of the pressure I put on myself to throw the perfect party haha! Of course it wasn’t perfect, nothing ever is, but it was wonderful and fun and a joyous celebration of the best gift of our lives.

It was a hot air balloon-themed birthday party and we got the most adorable cake EVER from Coty Beth Cake Design. It captured the theme perfectly and the details and color blew me away (so many heart eyes for that watercolor bottom layer!) The pressure was on to create a birthday cake topper that could sit on top of such a beautiful masterpiece as this cake!

My Cricut got such a workout making all of the decorations for this party that I half expected it to give up and beg for mercy, but it delivered and made my theme really come to life.

I used my Cricut Maker to create this hot air balloon 1st birthday cake topper. I cut the hot air balloon out of Basswood with gold glitter iron-on that I applied prior to cutting.

How to Make a DIY Hot Air Balloon Birthday Cake Topper with a Cricut

Supplies and Materials

Directions

Open the Hot Air Balloon Cake Topper cut file and customize as necessary. If the birthday cake topper you’re making isn’t for a 1st birthday, you can customize the version on the right with whatever letters or numbers you’d like, or just leave it as is. If you want to cut out letters or numbers like I did, position the letter or number where you want it on the hot air balloon (one at a time) and use the slice function.

Apply gold glitter iron-on to a piece of basswood. Covering an entire surface with iron-on is so easy… no weeding necessary! Just position the iron-on onto the surface you’re applying it to with the liner side up and press following this Heat Guide. After you have removed the liner and the surface is cool, place it under a couple of heavy books for a few hours to make sure the wood doesn’t bow.

Now you’re ready to cut! Cut the vinyl first and then switch out the fine point blade for the knife blade. Place the basswood with glitter side up on a strong grip cut mat and secure it to the mat by taping all sides with masking tape. Push the star wheels (the little white discs on the silver rod) all the way to the right as shown in the example below.

Since there are so many details in this basswood cut, it’s ideal if you can sit by the machine as it cuts so that you can clear out any small pieces of wood that may come loose throughout the cutting process.

How to Assemble the Basswood Birthday Cake Topper

Glue the 2 balloon pieces of pink vinyl to each other, right side out and glue to the inside of of the hot air balloon. Also glue the small pink square so that it peeks out of the bottom heart.