DIY Haunted Cake Halloween Centerpiece

Here is a clever, crafty cake with zero calories and all kinds of spooky fun.  Kimberly walks us through a fun way to make a faux cake that can be decorated for any holiday, season or event.  She decorated this one for Halloween and it is spectacular.  Once the cake base is done you can really have a lot of fun with decorating it with fussy cut papers, skeletons, spiders, cheese cloth, flowers and more, you cake your way – no one will eat it and it won’t go bad.  

Kimberly’s Spooky Cake

This tiered cake is the perfect centerpiece for your holiday decor plans.  Set it on a vintage or glass cake stand and surround it with fun little critters, caskets, spiders, you know all those creepy things you have just laying around.

To get started you will need to find – Stackable Round Boxes – you can find these in your craft store or look at random boxes at Tuesday Morning or other discount stores to find the perfect cake bases.  You can also use square boxes.  What ever you decide choose boxes that are similar in size and proportion to cake pans whether round or square.  You can also use styrofoam and cut to size.

What you will need:

• Canvas Corp 12×12 Black & Kraft Barbed Wire
• Canvas Corp Spooky Diamonds on Kraft 12×12
• Canvas Corp Haunt It Tags on Kraft 12×12
• Canvas Corp Halloween Costumes on Kraft 12×12
• Canvas Cats & Bats 12×12
• Canvas Corp Solid Orange on White 12×12
• Canvas Corp Black & Kraft cardstock
• Canvas Corp Kraft C-Flute
• Tattered Angels Spooky Calendar Mist Kit
• Tattered Angels Naturally Aged Kit – Rusty Metal
• Tattered Angels Black High Impact Paint
• Tattered Angels White High Impact Paint
• Tattered Angles Sangria Glimmer Glaze
• Tattered Angels Suede Glimmer Mist
• Cardboard pieces
• Assorted Silk or Paper Flowers
• Floral Grass
• Cheese Cloth
• Spiders
• Skeletons (no real bones please)
• Pinecones
• Mold Putty
• Joint Compound
• Moss
• Wooden Coffins (these were found at Michaels)

Tools: Paper Cutter, Scissors, Hot Glue Gun, Paintbrush, Spatula

Kimberly likes to work with some fun industrial hardware products that you may not be familiar with, we thought a little product education might be helpful before she walks you throughout the tutorial might be helpful.  

Joint Compound by ProForm – All Purpose Joint Compound is designed for tape application, fastener spotting and complete joint finishing of gypsum board.  It can also be used to repair cracks in plastered walls, to texture surfaces and to laminate gypsum board to other surfaces such as masonry or other gypsum board. It contains sufficient binder to secure the reinforcing tape and develops its strength and hardness by drying.  If you are not into fixing walls, filling cracks or finishing gypsum board, this product is terrific as faux cake icing, pure white in color and the perfect texture of real icing.  

Mold Putty by Amazing Casting Products – Alumilite’s White also known as Amazing Casting Resin provides users with an extremely user friendly rigid urethane that has good overall physical and cosmetic properties. The low viscosity along with the white appearance makes this material ideal for users who are looking for perfect cosmetics in their castings. The material has a mixed viscosity less than 100 cps and a mix ratio of 1:1 by weight or by volume. The material features a 2.5-3 minute work time and transitions from clear to opaque white to let the user know when the pot life is expiring. Demold time typically ranges from 5 to 15 minutes depending on the mold temperature and the mass of the material being cast. We always recommend warming the mold before casting to achieve a more consistent and thorough cure.  It is perfect for making multiple of detailed items such as the spiders or other little critters that have lots of detail. The end results are flexible embellishments that can be added to any project.  They can be painted easily with Tattered Angels Paints.  

Ok now let’s bake, we mean build a cake…..

Step 1 – wrap your boxes with your choice of papers, you can choose one or a few different papers that go together.  Canvas Corp papers are 80# cardstock making them great to work with and they hold up well to all the paints, compounds, mists and more.  With your spatula and joint compound, add the ‘icing’ to the top of the cake.

Step 2 – Cut your e-flute into circles that fit on top of each layer of the cake and paint White High Impact Paint.  Set you cake pieces aside and let them dry completely

Step 3 – While the cake is cooling, we mean drying, it is time to make some spiders.  I found an old plastic spider from the dollar store to make the mold, smashing it into the mold.

Step 4 –  I took some Amazing Casting Resin and mixed it up and poured into the mold, after it was dry I popped it out of the mold then I mixed up more resin mixture and poured it into the mold I kept repeating this process until I had a few spiders , then I painted them all with High Impact Black Paint and Dotted the but with Sangria Glimmer Glaze.

 Step 5 – Paint the cake with the Spooky Calendar Paint Kit in nooks and crannies and cover the paper with some joint compound and Tattered Angels High Impact Paint.  Add streaks of black with the Black High Impact Paint.

Step 6:  Time to create you coffins…start with these tiny raw wood coffins, the perfect Halloween surface….

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Follow the instructions in the Naturally Aged Kit to faux finish the wooden coffins – so fun and easy and they actually look like old coffins.

Step 7 – Top your cake with one of the coffins and decorate with a skeleton, flowers, moss and other goodies.  Cut a saying from the Haunt It Tags paper and glue to the side of the coffin.

Step 8 –   Fussy cut characters and icons from the Halloween Costumes paper to add to your cake and adorn the layers and sides with flowers, spiders, cheese cloth, moss and other embellishments. Keep in mind you can mist your flowers to make them look spooky and match your cake decor.

Step 9 – Secure the top cake layer to the bottom cake layer with a piece of wood, cardboard paper towel holder or larger sized dowel rod covered with your choice of paper.   Place the cake of a cake stand or plate to make it easy to move and look great on display.

Add spiders, skeletons, paper icons signs, flowers and fun details all around your cake.

A little Spooky Cake

To create this companion cake follow same steps, cover the bottom with moss, leaves or cheese cloth.  Top with the other two coffins a skeleton to watch over things!!!

Now put them all together and you have a terrific centerpiece for your upcoming Halloween party, mantel display or the center of your Halloween Buffet table.  

Kimberly loves to work with a variety of mediums from the craft and hardware markets and turning them into works of art.  She also love to collect fun little trinkets and stashes tags, bags and other found objects and packaging as you never know when they might be useful.  

We hope you enjoyed this make a cake tutorial as much as we have.  So much fun.

Happy Creating!!

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