One of my friends from work is expecting a baby so my co-workers and I decided to put together a bunch of items that all of our kids love. We thought this would be more personal than buying one big item off of the registry.
We bought some storage containers from the Land of Nod in her nursery colors -- red and lime. What a great deal -- only $9 - $12 a piece! Then each container had a theme. One had all of the medicine cabinet items you need on hand like infant Tylenol, PediaLyte, neosporin, etc. Another container had toys, rattles, teethers and books that our kids love. Another had sippy cups, bowls, spoons, bottle brush, etc. that we had found were better than the other brands. Another had a hand crocheted afghan I made from cotton yarn, SwaddleMe blankets (these are the greatest!), a Baby Einstein lullaby CD, Nuk pacifiers, etc. This way our friend received a ton of very useful gifts and benefited from our collective knowledge as mothers.
I also made her a diaper cake, but I didn't attach anything to it as all of the other goodies were already in the storage bins. The cake was really easy to make and only cost about $40 (I used coupons to buy the diapers). Here's how I made it:
80 Size 1 Pampers Swaddlers
30 Newborn Papers Swaddlers
3 bottles (what ever kind the mom-to-be registered for)
3 cardboard cake platters
lots of small rubber bands
9 very large rubber bands
sticky tack
I started building the cake from the bottom up. For the bottom tier I didn't have a cake platter on hand that was 14" in diameter so I cut one out of cardboard. Then I put some sticky tack on the bottom of a bottle and stuck it in the middle of the cardboard circle. Next I rolled up size 1 diapers and put a rubber band around each one. When I had enough rolled up diapers to go all the way around the bottle, I put a large rubber band around the entire ring of diapers to hold it in place. I repeated this step until I could no longer see the cardboard circle, which was four rings of size 1 diapers for the bottom tier.
I then made the second tier using a 10" diameter cake circle. I traced the outline of the bottle in the center of the cardboard and cut it out so that the cardboard would slide over the bottle that was in the center of the bottom tier. Then I put some sticky tack on the bottom of another bottle and stuck it to the bottle that was already part of the bottom tier. I used three rings of rolled up size 1 diapers for the second tier.
I made the top tier using a 6" diameter cake circle. Again, I traced the outline of the bottle in the center of the cardboard and cut it out so that this top tier would slide over the bottle that was in the second tier. I put some sticky tack on the bottom of a third bottle and stuck it to the bottle that was already part of the second tier. I used two rings of rolled up newborn diapers for this tier. You can still see the top of the third bottle sticking out of the top of the cake but this didn't bother me. I suppose you could make a bow or use a cute stuffed animal to try to conceal it if you wanted to.
Once the cake was assembled, I wrapped some pretty ribbon that was 2" wide around each tier and hot glued it in place. I then took artificial gerber daisies and pulled the flower off the stem and hot glued one flower in the center of the ribbon on each tier. You do have to be careful when pulling the flower off the stem because the whole flower can start falling apart if the stem is what was holding it together. This started happening to one of my daisies, so I just hot glued the layers of petals together in an inconspicuous place so no one would ever know.
I was pretty happy with how my cake turned out! The ribbon and the daisies were so my friend's style and it was a lot less expensive to make it myself than buy an already made cake. My method for making it may be a little different than other instructions I've seen on the web, but the cake was pretty sturdy and I made it using rubber bands and sticky tack I already had on hand.
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