Cake Topper with Matching Tea Light Box

CNCROi.com makes lots of cake toppers and Tea Light Boxes from my other business TeaLightBox.com but it’s the first time we do a matching set of both a cake topper and a Tea Light Box.

What’s pretty neat about this matching project is that they both have THE SAME INFORMATION but just across two completely different products and applications, one goes on a cake, the other you stick a LED candle in and enjoy for a lifetime.

I’ve made a lot of custom whiteboards here at CNCROi.com but it’s also the first time I get the opportunity to use this exact same material to make a custom tea light box.

What I really like about this whiteboard material is that it’s easy to keep clean, it’s stronger than typical MDF and the white is nice and shiny that isn’t easy to achieve using paints.

This project had a lot of firsts and that’s what I really enjoy about working here at CNCROi.com, the absolute diversity of projects I get to work on with people all across the business spectrum from small business owners and people wanting something special for their kids to large multinationals whose marketing department is several times the size of my entire shop.

CNC laser cutting this whiteboard tea light box was no different for our machine than regular MDF but the finish is something that’s really hard to replicated after it has been cleaned-up.

Something I did want to do as this is a matching set of a tea light box and cake topper is to make use of the same color on both, in this case, it was purple and the back side of this tea light box, for ultimate contrast, would be purple.

Another thing I decided to do was actually use my prototype for a tea light box 2.0 that doesn’t require glue to be used for this project, as such, glue would now be optional instead of obligatory when it came to final assembly by our customer.

Next up was to make the matching custom cake topper to go with the brand new upcoming purple and white tea light box.

For this project, I used mirrored acrylic and vaporised the back which would provide the transparency I’d need to make the whole back purple and you can then see the purple through the mirror which makes for a pretty cool effect.

I used this very same effect a few years ago for another customer who has this one beat as far as age goes and it’s still one of my most favorite cake topper projects I’ve done to date at CNCROi.com.

I’m not sure why but acrylic mirror likes to make wonderful little sparkles when it’s being vaporized, I’m guessing there is some metal content in there that’s causing it to happen.

What’s really great about using acrylic for cake toppers is that it’s easy to clean, it doesn’t absorb the cake sugars like wood would and it can be kept indefinitely quite easily, no wonder why it’s the favorite material of CNCROi.com customers when it comes to custom cake toppers!

Laser cutting acrylic does introduce a few heat affected bends especially on the thin parts from the heat generated both during the cutting process and the flame that’s shooting up heat from underneath (our vacuum table takes care of most of that heat).

Here’s the finished cake topper, she ain’t pretty but once the masking is removed, her looks will improve dramatically especially after getting a paint job at CNCROi.com.

There are two phases to a project, the first is ugly engraving and cutting and then its fine tuning and polishing, there are very few materials and applications for said materials that we have here at CNCROi.com that don’t use both processes.

If you are wondering how fine a level of detail we can work with here at CNCROi.com when it comes to paint filled acrylic, check out my summer badge made from gold fill and green semi-transparent acrylic.

While the custom acrylic cake topper was being fabricated, the other matching part of this project was being completed, purple’ing the custom tea light box with the new slotted design to make glue optional.

That way, by the time the purple on the tea light box was finished drying, it was time to set onto the paint platform the custom acrylic cake topper to also get a blast of purple color.

Of course, if you wanted your cake topper to be matching with a tea light box made out of aluminium, that’s possible too at CNCROi.com!

Assembly is a breeze for the tea light box, I really enjoy the contrast of the purple and the white board material, definitely something I plan on using again in the future along with the updated design.

Five months ago, I started TeaLightBox.com, here’s the video showcasing who when and why and you can also see how different the new design is compared to the current one being used for this CNCROi.com project.

Whether it’s the new design or the old one or something completely different, a tea light box is easy enough to customize here at CNCROi.com for just about any event, wedding through corporate retreat.

While I was having fun assembling the purple tea light box, the matching custom acrylic, now purple, cake topper was drying out.

The paint options are endless with CNCROi.com, if you want a glow in the dark custom cake topper with a tea light box, that’s no problem either!

Here are the end results of the purple’ing of the custom acrylic mirror cake topper, looks totally cool and the mirror literally reflects the environment it’s in, as a result, everything matches everything quite easily.

Here’s the custom purple filled cake topper at another angle, looks great in any light or room and CNCROi.com can endlessly customize it to suit any event.

Here’s a close-up of the purple acrylic cake topper, I really enjoy the color of this especially as nothing else in the shop was purple, so it stands out wonderfully!

Here are the finished cake topper and matching tea light box, both awesome in their own right and were both great fun to make for our customer. Happy 85th!

When it comes to custom tea light boxes, head over to my other site TeaLightBox.com but as I run both sides, feel free to ask questions here too at CNCROi.com.