DIY Cupcake Holder (How to Make)

A DIY cupcake holder can be a perfect addition to your dessert table, especially for a birthday party. It not only adds elegance but also helps to conserve space.

If you're looking for a unique way to showcase your cupcakes, creating a tiered cupcake holder can be a fun and rewarding DIY project that you can complete in just a few hours.

In this post, I have shared the step by step guide to create a beautiful and functional 3 tier DIY cupcake holder that will impress your guests and make your cupcakes stand out. It is a great way to display not just your cupcakes but also your other favorite treats at birthday parties, dinner parties, baby shower and even weddings!

Birthday Cupcake Holder

I made this DIY cupcake stand for my son's 12th birthday party. And it was crafted in a simple design to match the theme colors of his Marvel Superheroes party as well as the personalized cupcakes.  

The holder I have in the image above is a remake of the original one I made for his birthday. And that is simply because I did not capture any step by step photos while making it then. So I thought I will recreate it and this time, do a detailed step by step tutorial. 

And since this is a remake, you will see some slight differences between this and the original one I made for the birthday. See the original one below:

You can see that the boards I used in my original DIY cupcake holder were silver. So I did not have to cover them up in silver paper again. For this tutorial, however, I only had gold ones available at home, so I used silver paper. You can use the same technique to wrap yours if you want them in any other color. The other difference is that the base for my original cupcake holder was a thick cake drum. For this tutorial, I used a thinner one. The drum provides additional stability but its really OK to use a normal boards or even sturdy cardboard circles.

And also, the red paper for the center core of the original holder was glittery but not shiny. However, the one in the tutorial below is a shiny version. I could not find the same type of paper that I used originally at my local craft store. Hence I had to settle for the red shiny paper instead.

Preparing the cake boards

• I started by wrapping these, one by one. To wrap them, I placed each on the reserve side of my wrapping paper.
• Then I drew an outline around the boards. And then another outline after that, this time about one inch larger than the cake board. 

• And then I cut the papers following the larger circle outline.
• Next, I made short snips all around the cut outs. In cutting those snips, I made sure they did not exceed beyond the inner outline.
• And then I applied glue all around and wrapped the paper around the cake boards as shown in the image.

• You will need to make small folds on the wrapping paper as you wrap it around.
• The idea is to make sure the board is wrapped as neatly as possible.
• These will form the tiers on the cupcake holder. 

• And this was how the board looked like on the front side once wrapping was complete.

• I wrapped all three the same way.

• Next were the center foam cores. To wrap these, I measure the height of each block.
• The ones I used here were 3.75 inches high. 

Preparing the styrofoam blocks

• I cut out a long strip of red paper following the width of the foam foam which I measured to be 3.75 inches earlier, with additional allowance of 1 inch on both sides (see the image below).
• And then, similar to the cake boards, I made short snips on both sides of the paper strip before applying paper glue all over it. 

• To wrap the foam, I placed it in the center on the paper strip and made sure there is enough allowance on both ends.
• And then I wrapped it tightly around the foam core. 

• Once done, I folded the sides in exactly the same way as I wrapped the cake boards. 

• This was how both the core foams for the cupcake holder looked like after the wrapping process was completed.  

Assembling the tiered DIY cupcake holder

• To assemble the tiered cupcake holder, I started with the largest cake board as the base for the cupcake holder.
• I then used hot glue to stick the first foam core right in the center of the board. 

• And then I attached the second largest cake board on the foam core also with hot glue. 

• And I repeated the process for the next foam core and the top most cake board.

• To make sure all the components stick securely to each other, I placed a heavy book on the cupcake holder and left it there for about 30 minutes. And that was basically it, my DIY cupcake holder. 
• Seen on this images is empty muffin cups on the cupcake stand to test the space.

Hope you enjoyed this easy DIY cupcake holder tutorial and find it useful. You can use this same technique to create multiple tiered DIY cupcake towers.