Make an “Alma’s Way” Cake Topper

By Chelsea Foy

Mar 4, 2024

30 min activity

DIY cake toppers are a fun and easy way to add some festive colors to a birthday cake. You can create these tissue pom pom cake toppers in your favorite colors, or create them to match a party color scheme. And you only need a few materials to make them.

But don’t stop there! “Stop and think about it,” just like Alma from “Alma’s Way.” See what you might have around the house that can be turned into party decorations. Encourage your children to help by using their creativity to come up with additional fun birthday decoration ideas, too.

Materials

Directions

Start by stacking four small sheets of tissue paper. Cut these stacked sheets so that they are 2” wide and 4” long.

Next, fold one of the 2” ends over so that it creates a quarter-inch fold. This will be the start of an accordion fold. Now flip the stack over and fold that end backwards. Flip again and fold again, so that an accordion fold starts to occur. Fold back and forth in this same manner.

Continue folding until you reach the end of the tissue paper and crease the edges so that they’re nice and flat.

Tie a 3” piece of twine or string around the center of the folded tissue papers. Leave the ends of the twine long for now.

Use scissors to cut both ends of the folded tissue paper into points.

Now, begin to unfold the paper on one side of the string. You’ll open up the accordion and separate the four layers of tissue so that the paper begins to form a pom pom.

Repeat the process from Step 6 on the other side of the tissue paper, unfolding and separating the layers to create a full, fluffy pom pom. Repeat Steps 1-7 until you have your desired number of pom poms.

As you heat up your glue gun, remind younger children that it’s important for an adult to do these next few steps as the glue will be very hot. Trim the strings from all of the pom poms. Add a dot of hot glue to the part of a pom pom where the string was tied in a knot. Sink the end of a skewer or toothpick into the glue and hold until the glue is cooled and set. Repeat with the other pom poms.

Once you have skewers or toothpicks on all of your pom poms, insert them into your cake and get ready to celebrate! For safety, it is recommended that you keep these cake toppers away from any candles that may be on your cake.