Diaper Cake Tutorial

Before my best friend's shower to welcome her new lil man into the family, we threw them a couples' shower back in March. If you follow me, you may remember this post on the celebration.

When I started planning the shower, I knew I wanted to make a diaper cake. I searched Pinterest (of course) and found lots of ideas. Many of them were decorated per the theme of the party. This baby shower theme was sort of a sweet vintage theme with mason jars, milk glass, sweet flowers and bunting. I knew I wanted to use green and blue and just make it simple.

Here is what I ended up with! I love how it came out and think it was just perfect with the rest of the partay.

Below you will find my step by step instructions. Hope you find them helpful, if you have any questions, feel free to ask!

I used Huggies pure and natural diapers. Yes, they cost a bit more, but they did not have big distracting Disney or Sesame Street characters on them. They actually had Winnie The Pooh but the colors were muted and all you could really see on the cake was a thin green/yellow stripe which was much better to me. If you don't care, you can use whatever kind of diapers you want. I used a whole pack of 1's and a half a pack of 2's. This cake had about 70 diapers on it.

I started with my white cake stand and taped an empty paper towel roll to the middle of the stand. Then I took clear plastic hair ties and rolled up each diaper and put one of the hair ties around it. I started on the inside and worked my way out. I tied each "layer" of diapers with fishing string (thanks to Hubs for letting me borrow some!). 

Here is an aerial view of the first layer of diapers. I got three rows of diapers on the first layer.

I continued to work up the cake with 2 rows on the second layer and then just one row on the top layer. I really didn't measure anything before I started. I just winged it and it came out the perfect size for my cake stand.

Once all the layers were complete, I took a wide blue ribbon and pinned it on the middle of each layer. I then took thinner green ribbon and pinned it on either side of the blue ribbon. I lined up all the pins in what would become the "back" of the cake.

Here is a close-up of the ribbon and pins.

Next, I took some blue and green little "bejumes" as my mama would call them and wrapped them around each layer of the cake. I used some pins to secure each of them to the cake as well. 

I found these little colored ABC blocks at the dollar store of all places and tied a simple blue ribbon to the top of each of them and then pinned them around the cake.

Here are the blocks pinned to the sides of the cake. I just placed them sporadically and let them hang off the sides. 

I topped the cake off (literally!) with some bright green flowers. 

Here is a shot of the cake at the shower. I finished off the whole thing by adding tiny bunting around the bottom of the cake stand. 

The cake matched the theme perfectly and I was so happy with how it turned out!

I bought the diapers at Baby's R Us (it was the only place around here I could find the natural diapers). I bought all the decorations for the cake at Jo Ann's, except for the ABC blocks, I got them from Dollar Tree. I made the bunting myself. 

I wish you all the luck if you try to make one of these. This was one of the most simple projects I have ever done and I did it one evening watching tv.  I just love the way it came out and will definitely be making more for people in the future! 

(Please excuse all the ugly "process" photos, they were from my iPhone, before I got my camera!)