The First Time I.......

Welcome to the second episode of "the first time I...."!  Today, I made a diaper cake for the first time, so I wanted to share it on my blog because I'm super duper excited!

I've wanted to make a diaper cake for a long time, but I've never been brave enough/taken the time & energy to make one.  However, one of my oldest and dearest friends is having a baby this Spring.  Hurray! We have been friends since 6th grade.  We lived together on two separate occasions.  I was a bridesmaid in her wedding, she was a bridesmaid in my wedding.  She is wonderfully special to me, by golly, so she was worth the effort it took to experiment with this project!

First, I gathered my supplies:

Then, I sat down and rolled up all 84 diapers.  To hold them in place, I used these clear plastic hair bands.  To roll them up, start at the bottom, small end and roll it up to the top, and then wrap it with the hair band.

                                                   
Finally, I had a nice, big, stack of rolled up diapers!

Next, I took a big rubber band and put it around a bottle of lotion.  This served as my base.  Then I just kept adding diapers until I had three layers around the lotion.  Then start level two.

For the first layer, I used a small bottle so it could also serve as a vase for the top.  To make it stable, I used a sticky dot to attach the bottle to the lotion pump.

Then comes the ribbon.  Hurray ribbon!  Now, you may say "why isn't this blue or pink or sea foam green"?  Well, the mamma-to-be went to VCU (go Rams!) and bleeds black & yellow.  Her theme for the nursery is black, gray, and yellow and her stroller set and car seat that she got are simply adorable!  So I am continuing the theme!  I put the ribbon around the cake layers, and then topped the cake with flowers!

Now, time for decorations!  I used the sticky dots to attach craft sticks to the mini-bottles.  Then I scattered them around the layers.  I also rolled up some mittens and socks to look semi-flower like and tucked them into the cake layers.

     

   

And - drum roll please - here is my finished project!!  The ribbons aren't perfect right now, and it's a little lopsided, but I have to transport it to the baby shower next weekend, which is 3 hours away, so I am going to take all the supplies with me and touch it up and make everything perfect then.  I am just so tickled and proud, I wanted to share it with you today!

Overall, this project was really easy!  It took me exactly 2 1/2 hours to do this.  I started at 11:40 and finished at 2:10.  The longest part was rolling up the diapers, that took me 35 minutes.  I had a lot of fun and would happily do it again!