I am looking into selling gumpaste/fondant cupcake toppers on Etsy. I am unsure of how to package or ship these so they don;t get damaged. I could really use some help on this one!

Thanks a ton

I had no idea that you could find fondant/gumpaste decorations on Etsy until I read your post! It's absolutely amazing! Thank you for posting, because now I have a new source for decorations

Now as to your question - I made a fondant/gumpaste cutout last summer for a dear cake decorating friend in Texas to use on a groom's cake. The cutout was about 11"x11" and I made 5 of them. I shipped them wrapped as carefully as I could and shipped them with notes about fragile, breakable, this side up. Everyone one of them broke. The recipient said it was like putting together a jigsaw puzzle to try and get one to use.

I was so upset, that I was bound and determined to make this work - any way I could. So I purchased some more black fondant and gumpaste and started cutting the design again using the Cricut Expression ( I was learning how to use it back when the Cricut cake decorating topic was getting started, so I feel like an old hand at it now...lol). Anyway, I cut them out and set them out to dry.

I went to Michael's and bought the craft foam sheets they have to do craft projects with kids. I went to the scrapbooking aisle and bought some of the little foam squares that you use to raise scrapbooking items up off the page. I bought foamcore sheets and some foamcore glue.

I custom made "trays" out of foamcore with strips of foamcore cut and glued to all four edges so that the fondant cutout would lie in place and not slip off the foamcore. Then I laid each cutout onto it's individual foamcore tray and proceeded to use the little while square popup pieces and put those little squares all around each and every piece of the cutout. Then I tested each tray - shook it (not so gently, either) and even turned it upside down. The pieces all stayed in place! Then I stacked them and wrapped them and mailed them again (this time with insurance) and everyone one of them made it! Not one piece broke!

I know it's a lot of work, but I had promised my friend that I would do them, and I was going to make it work no matter what

Here are photos of what it all looked like. Hope that will help!

PS - don't forget to let us all know when you get set up so we can come look!

Pam

Wow! Thanks for the detailed photos/instructions. I don't want to ship anything too big, just the 12/24/36 toppers.

Good luck!

I never thought about selling those on etsy either! Good luck! I hope you get it worked out!