Wedding cakes, birthday cakes, OMG CAKE! Everyone loves cake. If they don't, they're lying, because there are a million types of cake and they're bound to like something.

This cake happened to be a very unusual wedding cake for my sister in law. It was dark chocolate with hazelnut cream and a super light fluffy frosting covered in edible flowers. And yes, their Russian blue is on the cake.

Along with an unusual cake comes a unique one of a kind cake topper. This is not your stock cake topper. We took the actual profiles of the bride and groom (and cat) to make this truly personal.

Step 1: Get a Photo of Your Subjects' Profiles

In this case I just got a super quick, non-fancy snap shot of the couple. No make up needed, you just need a profile! They don't even need to be in the same room or looking at each other, but it is nice this way so you can get the proportion correct.

Step 2: Trace the Profile of Your Subjects

Import the photo into the vector program of your choice. I prefer CorelDRAW but always suggest Inkscape for beginners because it's free at Inkscape.org

Just grab the line tool and trace carefully around the profile photo, one at a time, adjusting nodes as needed. I accentuated the eyelash because this will be cut very small and some features need to be exaggerated to be noticeable that small.

When finished, you can delete the photo and see if you can still recognize the faces.

Step 3: Add the Profile to Bodies

I showed the bride some stock vectors so she could pick a pose. She picked #4 so I followed that general idea but with shorter coat tails and drew hair that more closely matched the bride in length and curl.

Add some support sticks on the bottom that are about 3-4" long. Make sure it's not going to be longer than your cake!

Lastly, if you're going to cut in two different colors, draw a nice split line so that you can easily break apart the two for the different materials.

Step 4: Add a Cat and Cut!

We wanted to do the bride in white, the groom in black, and the cat in pearl gray. It came out wonderfully!

The cat was drawn in the same way with a photograph and tracing, but cut from pearl black acrylic. If you don't have a laser cutter, try a service like Outfab.com

Outfab.com is a good source for small volume (as in one-off) laser cutting. Units start at about $29 for 12"x6" pieces. These pieces were smaller than 12"x6" so I just fit in a bunch of other designs in the blank space.

If you'd rather not laser cut, you can also cut with a jigsaw by hand though it will be hard to get very fine detail.

Have fun and stay tuned for more cake-related posts!