Made by Mabelette- Diaper Cake

I have thrown a few baby showers in my day and one of my favorite gifts to give that doubles as a great decoration is a diaper cake. They are just so cute and practical. A friend of mine is throwing a shower for her sister and asked me to help her make one. So I gave her the list of things to buy:

About 100 diapers (she bought size three so we used 72...you will need more than that is you use a smaller size)
Small and extra large rubber bands- thin is good
Ribbon
bottle
anything else you want to add- I usually sneak onesies, washcloths, burp cloths, receiving blankets, and or hooded towels on the inside of the cake. Sometimes I will buy a package of cloth prefolded diapers and personalize them to use as burp clothes. I also hang toys, socks, and pacifiers on the outside. My friend really wanted something that was really simple and more for decorations so she opted to only add a few stuffed animals on the outside.

Platter- I use the cheap plastic ones that you can find in the party section

To start I tape the bottle to the center of the platter. I have found this helps keep the cake in place when wrapping the rubber bands. The second step is to wrap a diaper around the bottle and secure with a rubber band. Then start rolling your diapers. Start rolling from the waist section of the diaper in. My friend did not want the print section of the diaper showing so she rolled it to the inside. Then secure each diaper with the small rubber bands.

Then you stack the diapers in a circle around the bottle. I wrap a large rubber band around each circle to help give it more stability.

When you get to the largest circle you may need to wrap the circle in sections with the rubber band. Our rubber bands were OK to go all the way around each circle until the large layer. Then we wrapped half of the diapers with one band covering the bottle and then the other half (also including the bottle from that side) with a second band.

Here is a view from the top. If you wanted to add things like onesies, bibs, etc you can roll them similar to the diapers and stick them here and there as you go. When I am giving this as a gift I love to do this so that when they are "opening" the cake later on they find all kinds of things besides diapers.

To start your second tier wrap a second diaper around the bottle and secure with a rubber band. then start stacking diapers around it securing each circle with a large rubber band.

For the top tier I usually use a rolled diaper as the center and stack diapers around it. My friend happened to have a rattle that was a zebra (her theme was jungle) so we used it instead. Once you get your diapers the way you want them then you wrap the ribbon around it. Sometimes I wrap a receiving blanket around the outside of each tier to give it a very clean look. My friend picked out the Tiffany blue ribbon and the different animal ribbons to go over it. We used hot glue to secure the ribbon in place. Try to use as little of glue as possible to save on the diapers. This cake has to travel about 3 hours to get to the shower so we wanted to be sure it held up. Sometimes I use tape if I am having the shower at home and don't have to move the cake very much.

The last step is to decorate the cake. You can pin pacifiers or socks to the ribbon. You can stick rattles inside the ribbon here and there. You can use stuffed animals for the top of the cake or laying up against it. For my friend's cake she found some really cute cardboard animals that we glued to the ribbon on the sides. I happened to have the tiny stuffed animals left over from another cake I made. The point is to have fun with it. On one cake I made the theme was ABC's so I used blocks on the cake and made the cake square instead of circle. I love that you can really personalize a diaper cake to the mom and baby you are making it for.

Let me know if you have any questions!