Giving Back

In between orders, I'm constantly looking for new projects to work on and opportunities to fine-tune my skills. When I got wind of a local non-profit seeking items for a silent auction that would be held at the city's annual Independence Day festival, I thought it would be a great opportunity to not only help the group, but to see if I could get my name out a bit more. Of course, I have to admit, I have a soft spot for this non-profit, the Smart Mommies Education Foundation, because it is a new organization that came about from a humble beginning of breastfeeding support meetings that grew into general mom support meetings which I've been attending since my oldest was just under 6 mo old. I jumped at the opportunity to give back.

For this project, I wanted to put together a larger cake. Most of the cakes I've sold have been 2-tier cakes. It's been a while since I built a 3-tier cake and I wanted to go all out for this one. After a poll of my Facebook fans, I chose to create a green and white frog themed cake. I found some adorable frog receiving blankets which gave the foundation of the theme. The structure of the cake was of course diapers; and this cake was my first official spiral style cake. I stacked the tiers, wrapping a receiving blanket around each one. On the bottom tier a constructed a new way to display washcloths and a pair of baby mittens in the front of the cake. A decorative bow was placed in the middle tier and a second pair of mittens on the top tier balanced it out. on the sides of the cake, I positioned three pairs of socks - two on the bottom tier and one on the top tier. The middle tier held two coordinating pacifiers. Since I wanted this cake to have appeal all the way around, I also placed two matching hats on the bottom and middle tier on the back of the cake. Crinkle paper was added to each of the tiers. The crowning glory of this cake? An adorable 10" plush frog that I couldn't resist.

I absolutely love this cake and it's now among my favorites that I've created. It's the biggest cake I've made standing taller and including more diapers than usual. It has more baby items than I traditionally add as well. I don't know at this point how well it did in the silent auction, but I hope it did well and was able to bring in some money for the group. I had so much fun creating this cake and I can't wait until my next opportunity to work on a similar project.