Diaper Cake

I’m helping to host a baby shower for a good friend weekend after next and I’m making a lot of the decorations.  Of course, a must for any baby shower is a diaper cake.  I've been wanting to make one of these for a long time, so I was super excited when I was asked to help with the shower.  The theme is Bb is for Baby and we are doing a yellow and black color scheme.  The Bb theme is perfect because 1) they are having a Boy, 2) their last name starts with B and 3) she is an English teacher and loves to read so it is fun to incorporate little elements like that.  Instead of doing one big post on everything, I wanted to break it down into the elements, but I will be sure to share pictures of the whole shower after the party.

On to today’s main event:

I used two packages of the Target brand diapers—they have these cute blue and green polka dots on them.  I don’t have children so I have no idea if they are quality diapers or not.  I started by just rolling the diapers up and using a piece of tape to make them stay—a great football game activity.  Then I got started with the actual construction.  I did a bit of Googling and Pinteresting before getting started to figure out what would be easiest for me.  I eventually decided to start here:

Empty paper towel roll and cardboard cake base.  You could cut your own circle out of scrap cardboard but I opted to buy mine so it would look nice.  I’m terrible at cutting cardboard.  Then I glued the tube in the middle of the circle like so:

Just use a little hot glue and make sure it is more or less centered.  Now it is time to add the diapers.  This is a point where it might be nice to have an extra set of hands, but you can certainly do it on your own, like I did.  I started by putting a rubber band around the tube then filled in between the rubber band and tube with diapers. 

Start by just doing one row to make it easier on yourself.  This way diapers aren’t falling all over the place.  After you do the inner row, work your way out.

My bottom layer had three rows so my middle layer could have two and my top one.  After you get the bottom done, repeat with the middle.

Once the middle layer is done, stick a diaper in the top of the tube so that it will be level with the top layer of diapers.  This way you have a nice looking top and not an empty tube.  I didn’t take a picture of the complete cake without the embellishments.  This is where you can really let your imagination fly.  People use fabric, paper, ribbon, baby stuff, toys, just about anything you can imagine.  I wanted to keep mine budget friendly (this isn’t my gift so I didn’t want to buy a bunch of stuff) so I used fabric.  I find it to be more forgiving than paper even if it is a little more work.

Hobby Lobby as this cute bee fabric and I knew I wanted that to be a part of it.  I didn’t want solid black so I went for black with white polka dots.  And I got some black jumbo rickrack to top it off.

The top is my favorite.  I sewed the black fabric into a tube then ironed it flat.  I took a piece of the yellow fabric and added heat and bond.  Then I cut out the B’s on my Cricut and ironed them on.  On all of the layers, I attached the fabric by pinning the ends together then added a few more pins around to keep it up.

The middle layer is a tube of the yellow fabric with the black ric rack down the middle.  I hid the straight pins under the ric rack to make it look a little nicer.

The bottom layer it two tubes of fabric sewn together.  I love how it all looks together—sophisticated yet fun. 

I had some diapers and fabric left over, so I decided to make some diaper cupcakes too.

Instead of rolling the diapers, I used a spiral method on these.  Just Google diaper cakes and you’ll find someone who can explain how to do it.  This method allowed me to push the centers up a little to make them look like cupcakes.