Diaper Cake

A couple of weeks ago, my neighbor invited me to come to her baby shower, which was really exciting because I love being close to our neighbors. It's especially important for us living in a townhome community (what, you didn't really think I lived on a plantation did you? ;-) because we live literally on top of one another. David and I lived here for over a year before we started to make friends - and then we got a dog. Puppies, as most people know, have to be walked on the hour every hour. If anyone else is walking their dog, you're bound to make friends when you're outside all day. I'm really thankful for that - especially now that we have three dogs (hopefully we'll have babies of our own sometime soon before we legally qualify for zoo benefits) and two cats. In any case, I digress. :)

On my neighbor's invite, she mentioned that she really needed diapers and I definitely wanted to honor that. However, I did not want to buy a pack of diapers and drop them in a gift bag. I'd seen a lot of pictures of diaper cakes, and decided I would try to do it myself. I bought one pack of diapers, a spool of ribbon, some cardboard cake plates, easter grass, rubberbands, wooden skewers, some little wooden animals for .57, and a monkey bath puppet. At home I already had a hot glue gun and safety pins.

I really liked the way the rolled up diapers looked, but I then saw that you have to put a rubberband on each of the diapers to secure them. I really didn't want to do that because I didn't want my neighbor to spend an hour disassembling this to use the diapers.

So, using the cake plate on the bottom as a guide for size I started folding the diapers in half and placing them around in a circular shape. Now, I eventually needed my husband to come sit and hold these diapers as I was shaping them. When I was done with the first layer, I took a rubberband and stretched it around to secure the diapers. See why I needed two hands?

Next, I took three wooden skewers and stuck them in the cake vertically as my connectors. Starting with folding a diaper around one skewer, and using my husband's help to secure them, I made a second layer, making sure to fold a diaper around each skewer. Then I used a rubber band to secure them.

I did the exact same thing for the third layer.

Next, I measured out some ribbon, and secured it around each layer to hide the rubber band with a safety pin.

Then, using a glue gun, I glued the animals to the ribbon.

Finally, I safety pinned my monkey bath puppet to the ribbon, and for added measure, looped some scotch tape to stick on both sides and taped the bottom of the cake to the cake plate. And done.

This took me a grand total of about 25-30 mins.

Total cost:
-Diapers: 6.97
-32 rubberbands .67
-Monkey puppet 3.00
-Wooden shapes .57 x 4
-Easter grass 1.37
-Skewers 100 ct .97
-ribbon 2.97
-cake platters 4.00
           
total: $22.23

Not too shabby to do something nice for a friend for under $25. Would it have been cheaper to throw it in a gift bag? Sure, but I wanted to make her feel special, because she is. :) Annnd, if I need to do this again, I will already have most of the things to do it!

Hope you like my diaper cake. Excuse the mess in the background, I forgot to clean up all my materials before I snapped a picture!

Have a blessed day!

Casey