I made cupcakes for Matthew’s family reunion 4th of July weekend. I had about thirty minutes to spare before time to head out, so I decided to make my cupcakes a little more festive.

I saw a post about making drink embellishments on one of my favorite blogs, so I decided to try a variation of their tutorial to use for cupcakes. This is such an easy DIY that I probably don’t even need to spell out the directions, but I will…just in case.

Here are the supplies I used:
Red, white, and blue printed scrapbook paper
Toothpicks
Rubber cement
Scissors

This project doesn’t use much paper, so you could easily use scraps of paper from another project.

1. Cut strips of paper approximately 1 inch wide and 2.5 inches long. These don’t have to be perfect, so I didn’t measure them. I just cut them all approximately the same size.

2. Fold 3 or 4 strips in half. This will help with toothpick placement, and make it quicker to assemble them by doing multiple at once. Folding them in half helps you to move faster so the glue doesn’t dry on you.

3. Spread glue on one half of the folded piece of paper. Again, I did 3 or 4 at a time to make the process quicker.

4. Place a toothpick in the crease of the paper. I used regular sized toothpicks, so I only left a small portion sticking from the top so that I had plenty of room to insert the pick into the cupcake.

5. Line the ends of the paper up, and press the pick firmly into the crease. You’ll want to be sure the paper is glued tightly together around the toothpick. Otherwise, the flag will slide down the pick once it’s upright.

6. Once the flags are dry, you can snip a little “v” into the flag to give it a more finished look. Again, I didn’t measure these…I just tried to cut them evenly.

This post should end with a photo of my festively decorated cupcakes, but the said photo doesn’t exist. For some wild reason, our oven decided to heat to 450 instead of 350, so my red velvet cupcakes were burned to a crisp! Can you imagine my frustration when I realized I made 24+ handmade flags for cupcakes that I couldn’t even take to the party?! Instead, we stopped at Walmart and purchased some cupcakes from the bakery. I still used my flags, but it seems a little strange to put handmade decorations into store bought cupcakes!

I was also going to use my fancy cupcakes for my #summerfood challenge for the Phone Photography Project. Another bummer.

The beauty of this project is that is can be adjusted to fit any holiday or occasion, just by altering the paper. I envision making these flags for several projects, but hopefully I’ll have a dessert to stick them in next time!