I made this 3D fondant guitar cake topper for a musical themed birthday cake. The cake was a 2 tier cake, and the 3D guitar was the topper. I made the guitar entirely in fondant (except for the guitar strings that were made using thread) and it was placed in an upright position on the cake.
This was the first time I made a guitar cake topper and I must say, I was quite happy with the way it turned out. Here is my step by step tutorial on how to make a 3D guitar cake topper:
3D Guitar Cake Topper Tutorial
These were the main supplies I used:
- Fondant – I used fondant in 2 colors, white and black . Both were Satin Ice products.
- CMC powder – Since the guitar was meant to be standing upright, I added CMC to the fondant to help it hold its shape well and dry really firm.
- White sewing thread – I used thread for the guitar strings
- Lollipop stick
- Sugar craft knife
- Scriber Needle Tool
- Guitar template
- Round plunger cutter set
- Pizza cutting wheel
- Fondant glue and shortening – these were the glues for this project and I used them interchangeably.
And this was how you make the 3D guitar cake topper :
The guitar cake topper template
- Start by getting the guitar template ready. I got mine from the internet and I traced the shape onto a greaseproof paper. In drawing the template, it is important to ensure the size of the guitar is exactly how you want it to be on your cake. If you need help with resizing your template, here is my tutorial on how to do it.
- Once the template is ready, cut it along its outline and then cut the fingerboard off the body.
Shaping the fondant
- Next is cutting the guitar cake topper body in fondant. I used white fondant that has been mixed with CMC. Roll it to about 1 cm thickness. Place the paper template on the rolled fondant and used your sugarcraft knife to cut it along its outline. For the top part of the guitar cake topper body, do not cut the square indentation out. Instead, just mark the lines with your sugar craft knife.
- And then, carefully slice off a thin layer of fondant off the square indentation. This was how my guitar cake topper body looked it:
- Once that is done, turn the body over and apply a layer of glue all around the sides of the guitar body.
- Next, roll some black fondant thin and cut it into a 1 cm wide strip. And then roll it loosely into a circle and carefully unrolled it as you attach it around the body of the guitar. Start at the top of the guitar body and finished at the same point.
- Next, turn the cake topper body over and carefully slice off the black strip to match the thickness of the body at the top.
- And then insert a lollipop stick (I dipped mine into some glue first so that the stick would dry in place inside the guitar cake topper) into the body of the guitar at an angle you want the guitar to be poked into your cake later.
Adding the finger board
- Next is the finger board. You can use the earlier paper template and cut out a black piece of fondant in the exact same size as the paper template.
- Apply some glue to the guitar cake topper body and attach the finger board to it.
- And then turn the guitar over so that the finger board could dry in a flat position.
- For extra support, form a triangle piece of black and attached it to the base of the fingerboard as follows:
The sound hole
- While waiting for the finger board to set, prepare the rest of the deco on the guitar cake topper. Start with the sound hole by cutting 3 round pieces using a round plunger set – 2 black circles and 1 white circle in descending sizes.
- Using the medium sized cutter, cut a hole in the largest black circle.
- And then use the smallest round cutter to cut out a hole in the white circle.
- This was what you should have after all the cutting.
- To make the soundhole, place the smallest black circle into the white one.
- And then, I insert that into the largest black circle as follows:
- Attach the sound hole onto the guitar topper body, followed by a black rectangle piece below it. I used shortening to attach all these pieces onto the guitar.
- Next, using the fingerboard paper template, cut out another piece of fondant, this time in white and in a slightly smaller size than the earlier black one. Divide that white piece into 2 pieces and attached the first piece onto the black fingerboard as shown below.
- After that, using a sugar craft knife, press the blade into the white fondant (making sure it does not cut through the black underneath) to form lines on the fondant.
- And carefully, using a needle scriber tool, remove the thinly spaced white cuts to leave evenly spaced black lines on the finger board as shown:
- After that, attach the second part of the white fondant.
- And similar to the finger board earlier, cut a thin line in the center and then make a few horizontal lines as shown:
- This was how my finger board looked like on the guitar cake topper after all the lines were completed.
The tuning keys
- Next are the tuning keys. To make the keys, roll a long black piece of fondant into a thin rope and slice out tiny square bits. I made a total of 6 such bits.
- Attach 3 keys on each side of the finger board. I used fondant glue for this as I wanted them to be totally secure on the sides of the finger board.
The guitar cake topper strings
- For the guitar strings, you can use white sewing thread. Cut the thread into equal lengths, long enough to run from the top to the bottom of the guitar. You only need 4 strands for the guitar topper in the size that I have here, but its always better to have a few extras for contingency.
- Dip the strands into fondant glue. This helps to not only stick the thread onto the guitar topper, but also helps them remain straight.
- Straightened the strands of thread on the guitar cake topper and make sure they were equally spaced out.
- Next, cut 2 long rectangle pieces in white fondant.
- Attach one of the pieces onto the black rectangle on the fondant, on top of the guitar strings. And then trim off the excess thread.
- After that, add the other white rectangle piece on.
- And for the final step, trim the excess thread on the top.
- With that, the guitar cake topper is complete. I let mine harden completely in a horizontally flat position until my cake was complete before putting it onto the cake.
This was how the completed guitar cake topper looked like on my cake:
Hope this guitar cake topper tutorial was useful.
Happy Decorating 🙂
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