How to make a diaper cake

I had seen diaper cakes before and thought they were so cute and so practical. Two of my favorite adjectives! This had to be a sign. So, for Chaela's baby shower this past weekend I decided to give it a try. Very simple. Another favorite adjective. You didn't know this was going to turn into an English assignment post I bet.

If you happen to be attending a baby shower in the future, this makes a great gift. Once it's decorated it makes a nice decoration, perhaps a centerpiece and afterward, the parents-to-be can take it apart and use the diapers for their new bundle.

What you will need to make a 3 tier cake:

• diapers (I bet you didn't see that one coming!), but seriously, depending on how big you'd like to make the cake you may need anywhere from 50-80 diapers, size newborn or size 1
• rubber bands, both big and small
• a dish or platter to support the cake
• an object to place in the center of the dish/platter to be used for support, I used a bottle of San Pellegrino but you can use anything really - baby bottles, baby lotion bottle, etc.
• 1 inch wide ribbon to decorate
• any other items you wish to use for decoration - for example: pacifiers, small toys, baby socks, artificial flowers, etc. 

What to do: 

1. Place your supporting object, my San Pellegrino, in the center of your dish/platter.
2. Begin rolling the diapers and securing with a small rubber band. You will want to roll the diaper with the design facing up and the opening closest to you. Roll in from the opening of the diaper to the middle crease so all that is visible is the white of the diaper. 
3. I then placed a large rubber band around the San Pellegrino bottle and began filling with my rolled diapers. There were about 8 that went around the entire bottle so that it fit snugly. 
4. Place another large rubber band around that set of diapers and begin filling with more already rolled diapers. You will do this one more time for the bottom tier so that it includes 3 rings of rolled diapers. 

5. For the 2nd tier you will repeat lines 3 and 4 but will only have 2 rings of diapers around the bottle. And for the 3rd and final tier, you will have 1 ring of diapers around the bottle. 
6. Once my cake looked like this:

7. I then wound my ribbon around each tier making sure to cover the rubber bands up completely. 
8. Finally, I decorated my cake. Simple with just the ball and the bow, but I thought it looked sweet. 

And since I had diapers left over, I decided to make a smaller, two tier diaper cake as well. I called this Scott's diaper cake since I used a can of Red Bull as my center supporting object and lined the bottom tier with little rubber duckys.

I also bought a set of plain white note cards and made my sister-in-law some Thank You cards. Just printed the words "thank you" in the bottom center and using a duck stamp, made an impression in the center of the card. It was blue and brown which were the colors I used when making the invitations as well. Which I don't have a picture of but I liked that they were a little matchy. I included the labels with names and addresses of her guests in with the Thank You Cards, just one less thing for the mother-to-be to have to deal with in the last few weeks of pregnancy. A friend of my mom's did this for me at my baby shower and I thought it was the best, so I feel like I'm passing it on.

I really had too much fun making the cakes and getting the Thank You cards together. The girls loved watching me make the cakes and when I told them what it was Sofia says to me "but Mommy, we can't eat diapers!" One smart cookie that one is!