Printable Cupcake Toppers for your Superhero Party

Printable  Cupcake Toppers

I talked last week about the awesome superhero birthday party that we threw for my son and shared how to make cute superhero capes from recycled felt. Today I’m going to share another superhero birthday party craft: printable cupcake toppers!

Cupcake toppers aren’t really appropriate for one-year-olds who don’t know what is OK to chew on and what is a choking hazard, but if I ever throw another superhero party for my kid, these printable cupcake toppers are happening!

If you’re like me, you may shy away from printables sometimes, because printing doesn’t feel like the most eco-friendly way to craft. Check that green guilt at the door, and check out how to reduce the impact when you’re using printables in your crafting.

Note about these photos: My printer is tragically low on ink, so forgive the streaky printing and less-than-bold colors. I tried to boost the saturation a bit to show you what these look like on a proper printer!

Printable Cupcake Toppers for your Superhero Party

Materials

Directions

1. Print out your cupcake toppers. Want to make this an upcycling project? Instead of printing on regular ol’ printer paper, use the blank backs from bank statements or bills. Any piece of junk mail that’s printed on standard 8 1/2″ x 11″ paper will work. The number of sheets you need depends on how many toppers you want to make. You need two stars for each topper. Each sheet has 12 stars, so you can make 6 toppers with a sheet. I kept it simple and made just 3 toppers, but you can make one for each cupcake too. Do what works best with the rest of your superhero decor!

2. Cut out the squares.

Prinable Make Superhero Cupcake Toppers

3. You’re basically making a sandwich, where the stars are the bread, the glue is the peanut butter, and the toothpick kind of sticks out from the middle. Coat the wrong sides of two squares with glue from your glue stick, then gently place the toothpick in the center on one square, so about 2/3 of the toothpick will stick out. Cover the toothpick with your other square, making sure to align the paper as much as you can.

Printable Superhero Cupcake Toppers

4. Smooth the paper down, making sure the glue sticks the paper together but also sticks the paper to the toothpick. Trim off any excess white that’s peeking out around the edges of your cupcake topper. Stick them into your cupcake, and you’re ready to party!

5. When the party is over, just pull the toothpicks out of the middles of the toppers. You can toss the toothpicks into the compost pile and the toppers can go in the recycle bin.

2 thoughts on “Printable Cupcake Toppers for your Superhero Party”

  1. Compost the toothpicks AND the paper flags! The small amount of ink and glue on the paper won’t make any difference to the compost and the worms will love the paper.

    In fact, worms love all sorts of papers and cardboards – just limit the amount of ‘shiny’ papers you put in your compost, as it’s plastic coated. It takes longer to break down, but in the end you just pick out the little piece of plastic that’s left, if you can find it, and throw it away. Your plants will be quite happy with paper in the compost as well.

    I actually use paper as ‘weed mats’ in my gardens – layer sheets of paper around your plants (if you have the water, then wet it first and the weeds won’t grow through it at all) cover it with lawn clippings, compost, etc and bob’s-your-uncle (that’s a very old fashioned term used in Australia 2 or 3 generations ago, but it still crops up every now and then 😉 and sort of means “there you go” ) The worms in your garden soil will compost the paper directly into the ground, so keep an eye on it and replace when needed. As time goes by, this process will take a much shorter amount of time because the worms will multiply and compost the paper quite quickly.

    Ultimately, this process is fantastic for everything..
    You keep paper out of landfill and boost your own compost. If you use paper as a ‘weed mat’ then the weeds will be reduced, leaving more nutrients for your plants and the paper mat helps to keep the moisture/temperature levels around your plants at a happy place as well. And of course you eventually get more worms, making the soil even better, because worms are really, really important for soil health.

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