The Dilemma of a perfect Baby Shower Gift.. Practical or Fabulous?

Shower gifts are always a big dilemma for me.  

Should I give practical or fun and fabulous?  

It's been a while since I've been to a baby shower 

so while I was trying to come up with a clever idea, 

I came across this photo of a gift I made a few years ago...

A Diaper Cake!

For the life of me I couldn't remember how difficult it was to make...

as I sat pondering the idea of just ordering some fabulous item

from some genius crafter at Etsy, I began to remember the oohs and ahhs

this little gift evoked.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all about a heart felt gift.. in fact, 

I am the first one to spend hours

searching for the perfect gift, but if I'm being honest here, I must say I do love an

oooh and ahhh from the recipient.  *If the crowd likes it too, well..

With inspiration at hand, I set out on my journey to give it the old college try. 

What I learned in the process??  

Not only are diaper cakes thoughtful and uber adorable, 

they are fabulously fun and EASY to make!

For this project, I used one 14 inch cardboard cake round, one 12 inch dowel, 59 size 3 diapers, hot glue and double sided tape, rubber bands in assorted sizes, assorted ribbon, silk flowers and an assortment of small gifts in the baby's room theme.  * I chose a larger size diaper so the mother can keep the cake for a while, as an adorable baby room decoration.

To begin, I rolled 56 of the diapers and secured them with small rubber bands.  Next, I rolled a diaper around the end of a plastic dowel and secured it firmly with another small rubber band.

I hot glued the diapered end of the dowel to the cake round.  Next, I glued it to the cardboard cake round.  To make the first layer, I took a couple of the rolled diapers and stood them upright next to the dowel.  I secured them loosely with a large rubber band then kept inserting diapers into that rubber band until five surrounded the dowel. 

  

I did that again two more times for this layer, using eleven diapers for the second circle around the dowel and sixteen for the last, for a total of 33 diapers on the bottom layer.  

For the second and third tiers I repeated the process.  I kept the colored ends of the diapers all facing one direction to give it a professional and tidy appearance.

Voila! I had my three tier diaper cake! 

This took all of 30 minutes!  I'm also the first one to bore of a project that takes too long,

so this is my kind of craft!

Now the real fun began... I didn't time this part because it was just 

too much fun to care.

To decorate the cake, I took a thick ribbon and wrapped it around each tier, taking care to cover the rubber bands completely.  Then I used hot glue to secure.  I layered thin ribbons as well as different colors in order to make the cake really pop with a little something special. As you can see from my previous cake years before, it's just as lovely to tie bows.

Since I chose to secure these ribbons with hot glue, I used silk flowers to cover the glued ends, 

then turned the cake around to decorate the other side with the mother's theme. 

What do you think? 

I think my dilemma is solved!

Fabby and practical!

I read the funniest thing while looking for some great ideas for this cake.  

It was a curious husbands comment.. 

"Now, how does a diaper cake work, exactly?  You eat it?"  

I hope the wife said "yes".  HA!