The Rodgers' Neighborhood: DIY: My First Diaper Cake

Hosting that baby shower last week was stressful. Only because I love the mommy-to-be with all my heart and wanted everything to be perfect. I saw this gorgeous cake on Pinterest and used it as my inspiration.

Found on The Hostess Blog

Here is the shopping list given for this gorgeous cake.
Set of 3 DwellStudio receiving blanket (from Target)
Size 2 Pamper swaddlers
chocolate brown grossgrain ribbon
Pink shabby rose trim (sold by the yard at Hobby Lobby)
chocolate brown ric rac
Pink & Brown scrapbook papers – used to create the “vase” at the top of the cake and then cut into 1.5″ circles for the “candles”
Scrapbook embelishments
Faux flowers – from Michaels

Unfortunately, I could not find the swaddling blankets that were featured on this cake. So, I made due with the ones that I was able to find. Here is my step-by-step process in making the diaper cake (featured here) with my mom.

Step 1: Buy all of your supplies! =) I bought size 2 diapers as recommended. Babies are born in many sizes and grow at different rates. It's not a guarantee how long they will stay in newborn diapers very long, or at all! My niece was born at just over 9 pounds. There was little time for small diapers. =)

Some of the ribbon pictured was not used.

Step 2: Find/Create the base for your cake. I originally planned on just putting an extra layer of diapers in each level but then found an almost empty wine bottle. I dumped the contents and washed out the bottle. It was a great anchor in the middle of the cake as well as a vase for the flowers!

Yes, that's a wine bottle. No, it is empty.

Step 3: Start rolllin'! Stack 2 diapers on top of each other and start rolling them from the hip to the middle. Try and keep one end even and flat so that it can become a base. Wrap the roll with a NEW rubber band. Trust me, even new ones break.

Rolling 2 diapers.

Tight rubber band.

Step 4: Start layering. I used a post recommended by The Hostess Blog. It is from Alpha Mom. I mostly used her just to get the ideas for rolling and layering. If you notice her cake, she flattens out some diapers to fill in empty space around the bottle. I didn't and later, I will tell you why. Ok, this step (and all the rolling) is where having my mom helping me was amaze-balls! After we had enough to make one layer around the bottle, she held the diapers in place while I stretched a rubber band over the top of the bottle and around the diapers to hold them in place. We did this one more time but thankful my dad walked by to help hold all the diaper rolls!

Bottom tier, layer 1. We added one more circle around but I didn't get a pic!

Step 5: Cover tier. I took one of the 40"x40" swaddling blankets, kept it folded in half lengthwise, wrapped it around the 2 layers of rolled diapers, and tucked in the excess between the bottle and the inner circle of diapers. This is why I didn't do the flattened diapers around the bottle. These blankets will have enough excess to fill in the gaps.

Swaddled diapers.

Step 6: Ribbon base. I bought a satin-like chocolate brown ribbon to cover any imperfections or gaps at the base of each tier.

We just taped the seam together. Cover up coming!

Step 7: Repeat steps 3-6 for the middle tier. This tier only had one circle of diapers. The swaddling blanket had more excess since the tier was smaller than the previous. Make sure that you try and line up the seams at the end of the swaddling blankets. This helps for covering the tape, pins or whatever you use to secure the ribbon and blankets.

I put the swaddling instructions around the bottle too! (See it?)

Step 8: Repeat steps 3-6 for the top tier. This tier had so much excess blanket that there was no way there were any gaps.

I love how I forgot some crucial pics but at
least there is one for every step.

Step 9: Bouquet topper. I bought 3 fake, pink hydrangea and 1 fun, pink and brown polka dot gerber daisy. My mom helped me bend them to where they covered the space from the top of the tier to the top of the bottle. We left the stems pretty long. The cap of the wine bottle was removed and the stems were put into the bottle. Even after being cut, the stems still reached the bottom of the bottle. This gave them great stability!

Such a fun gerber!

Step 10: Ribbon decor. I added a pink rose ribbon around the top of the bottom tier and pink rick rack (wavy ribbon) at the top of the middle tier. Mom had the clever idea of taking ribbon down the seam in the back to cover it up. We used the chocolate brown with pink polka dot ribbon. My mom used a safety pin to secure the ribbon on top of the top tier (but under the flowers). We then just tucked it under each their using the end of some scissors. We did this 2 more times to give the "cascading ribbon" balance around the cake (split it into thirds).