Hippo Trike

A friend of mine was expecting a little girl, so, of course, I was going to make her diaper cake. I was a little concerned that she may have already had a diaper cake for the shower so I decided to make something a little different. Because I wanted a little more practice making motorcycles and tricycles I decided I will go ahead and make her a trike.

Diapers make up the wheels of the trike. The structure is put together with receiving blankets. I selected a few blankets that she had chosen for her registry. I then added some baby wash cloths, some diaper cream, and other baby items. To ride the trike, I added a pink, super soft, stuffed hippo.

The trike turned out super adorable. I did have a few problems with some items not staying in place, so in the future I may need to make more of an effort to secure them better. I think this boils down to me not having a specific set formula for my trikes. I like to incorporate different items that aren't on the typical trike and make some substitutions to add variety and personalize it a little bit more. This means that in putting it together, some adjustments need to be made to make sure it stays secure. Regardless, it came out really cute and I am happy with the final product. My friend seemed thoroughly overjoyed by it too. I can't wait for more opportunities to make these adorable diaper cakes.

4 Tiers!

I am so excited to present my first 4-tier cake! This cake was a custom order with a request for a nautical theme. I was super excited about this project since new themes are always fun for me. It turned out to be more difficult than I anticipated and I ended up going in a slightly different direction than I thought.

When I first started considering nautical ideas, I thought I might do a red and blue cake. I had seen a number of baby items in those colors and that is what I prepared for. This was apparently not to be. When I actually went in search of nautical items, it turns out that green and blue were the favored colors. Fortunately, I was able to work with that just as easily.

The "center" of the cake decorations was an adorable nautical crib sheet that I found. The rest of the cake was inspired by this. Three receiving blankets were matched with this in various blue, green, and white designs. The sheet and the blankets became the decorations for the tiers. I added a sailboat teether and some sailboat bodysuits along with color coordinated washcloths. This cake also had a few new features. The first new item was some sailboat "decals" which were added strategically around the cake. I also added the name of the expected baby "Terry" on the front of the cake and "ahoy" on the back of the cake in foam lettering. Incorporating the name was a request of my customer.

The cake came out wonderfully with clean lines and a unified theme. Best of all, of course, my customer was pleased with the cake. That's always my goal.

Stepping it up

For quite some time now, I've been wanting to add a bit of extra "umph" to my Noah Shoes. While I'm still looking into options for different styles, I first wanted to start small and make sure I had a quality product under my belt before expanding. Now that I feel I've got the shoes themselves relatively consistent, I wanted to add something. Lucky for little girls, ideas to dress up their shoes are easy to come by.

When I was approached for a review of my shoes from Renewable Mommy I thought this was the perfect opportunity to make an adorable pair of shoes for her to review. Not long ago, I had found some adorable material that I couldn't pass up for little girl shoes so I chose this material for the review and dressed the shoes up with some satin ribbon and a bow (sewn and secured so it wouldn't come undone).

Black, White, Red Flowered Shoes with Ribbon Embellishment

This pair was also part of the review
found on Renewable Mommy's blog

I love how the shoes came out and I received a glowing review on the blog. They are perfect and girly and everything I imagined they would be. I look forward to additional embellishments on shoes in the future as it's my next step before I move into new styles. Keep looking out for changes, updates, and new options available! And certainly, don't be afraid to ask if I can try something in particular. Sometimes, all I need is for the opportunity to present itself and I'm up to new challenges!

A Little Spacey

When a friend and neighbor showed me some of the blankets and nursery accents she was working on for her newest baby on the way, the wheels started turning. Of course, I had to make a diaper cake for her and being sneaky like I am, I made a point to take note of the theme she was going with - outer space.

I daresay, I thought the project to create an outer space diaper cake was going to be much simpler, or perhaps, it's just the way I work, but the whole project took much more time than I anticipated and sadly, it was delivered after the baby was born. At least it wasn't so late that she couldn't use the diapers.

To coordinate the theme, I decided to make a baby quilt with space printed fabric. I'm still new to quilting, but I wanted to do this right, so I planned it all ahead and went to work. No complicated shapes, just squares and strips, and I think for my second true quilt (not counting the rag quilts I'd made for previous gifts) this one came out great, especially since it was my first time designing one and not following anyone else's instructions! I even managed to have the finished project the size I was going for (40"x40"). In the end it was an adorable quilt made of cotton print with super low loft poly/cotton batting, making it a nice light quilt for a summer baby.

Of course, for a whole diaper cake, I needed a few more items to go around the tiers, so I created some coordinating burp cloths. Two were solid colored in a turquoise flannel that matched the quilt. I then made a third burp cloth with bright orange flannel that coordinated with the quilt and accented it on one end with the cotton space print material used in the quilt. The burp cloths were great, but unfortunately they weren't enough on their own and I needed one more item for the cake.

I decided to try a brand new project and make a pair of cotton pants with some of the matching cotton material. I found a pattern for newborn pants and got to work. The main part of the pants were made with the space print cotton fabric. I added extra thick cuffs at the bottom of the pants using the turquoise material from the quilt so that the ends could be rolled to adjust for length. I love how they turned out. It's hard to imagine a baby that small, but they fit the new baby great.

With all of these items together, it created my third "Nursery Set." Nursery Sets are basically a collection of coordinated baby items that can be created and then either gifted as the set itself or they can be incorporated into a cake to make a themed diaper cake. Previous nursery sets can be seen here where I created two rag quilt nursery sets for cloth diapering mamas. This complete set included one quilt, three burp cloths and a pair of newborn pants.

With all the items completed, I was able to begin work on the cake. the quilt became the decoration for the bottom tier. The middle tier held the two turquoise burp cloths and the pants and third embellished burp cloth adorned the top tier. Additional goodies were added to the cake including a pair of socks, teethers, and washcloths. As a final touch, I placed a rattle on the top of the cake and I love how it looks "spacey" and the colors match wonderfully. I don't think I could have picked a better cake topper. Of course, the best part of the whole thing was that the mom liked the diaper cake and was especially excited that it was spaced themed, just as she selected for the nursery.

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Jungle Fever

Jungle themes in baby rooms are incredibly popular. As a result, I've created a number of diaper cakes and other gifts with jungle themes. I personally love them and can't wait for the opportunity to make more! I recently had an order for a buggy with a jungle theme.

For this buggy, I was hoping to make the design a bit more "mom friendly" as my traditional design incorporates rolled diapers which can be tedious to take apart for use. Fortunately, the buggies contain a modest enough number of diapers to ease the task a bit. In any case, I managed to create this buggy with a minimal number of rolled diapers and achieved a similar enough effect. The outer "basket" portion of the buggy was adorned with a jungle print crib sheet that matched items on the mom's registry. Washcloths from the registry were used to complete the hood and blanket of the buggy. Several additional washcloths were hidden within the buggy to improve the overall shape that was lost due to the alteration in design. Two pacifiers were added inside the buggy, also chosen from the registry. As a final touch, giraffe print ribbon and a washcloth flower were added.

For more ideas about jungle, jungle related, and animal themes, check out my posts on these baby gifts:

2-tier Giraffe Safari Cake
2-tier Lion Safari Cake
Jungle/Safari Taggy Blocks
Jungle/Safari Burp Cloths
3-tier Monkey/Flower Cake
2-tier Giraffe Print Diaper-free Baby Cake
3-tier Monkey Cake
Monkey Tricycle

As I mentioned, I'm excited about more jungle themes in the future and can't wait to see what challenges are presented to me.

Shower Sets

One fantastic thing about baby diaper gifts is the ability to make many different items. This versatility lends itself to so many incredible options. Because of those options, it becomes possible to decorate for a shower using several different types of diaper and baby gifts that can be coordinated to match almost any theme imaginable and give a unified look to your shower as well as providing the mom to be with some baby essentials.

I was recently approached for my second shower set (the first being my Paris set that can be seen here and here). For this set, the request was for items in various shades of blue. Fortunately, the expectant mom registered for a number of items that could be coordinated and included in the set. This set contained a bouquet, baby candy, and a diaper cake.

The bouquet was a mini bouquet. It was formed of washcloths into roses of various blues to match the color scheme requested. Six "flowers" were arranged in a small dark basket, the presentation selected by my customer.

Washcloth candy was also part of the set. For this collection, my customer requested a combination of roll and disc candy. She receive one of each shape in four different colors also matching the overall scheme.

The 3-tier diaper cake was built of diapers in my newer spiral style. Hooded towels adorned with trains created the outer decoration for the bottom and middle tiers. Coordinating burp cloths were then used to cover the top tier and add additional decorations. Also included on this cake, were pacifiers, washcloths, socks and a teether toy. As mentioned previously, many of the items included on the cake were from the expectant mom's registry which make for a great gift since she selected the items. The cake was finished with ribbons and paper shred in various shades of blue and white.

The full set had a unified look with coordinating colors in shades of blue with white and green as accent colors. I truly loved the opportunity to create a group of matched gifts and I hope in the future to receive more orders such as this where my gifts are used as decorations for different areas of a shower.

Camo Cake!

My husband's cousin was planning a shower coming up and really wanted a diaper cake. This cake presented a number of challenges, but it was seriously a joy to make.

First on my list of challenges and probably the biggest factor that lead to difficulty was the time table. I had a very short amount of time to get the cake built and to the recipient. Adding to the challenge was the need to ship the cake. I already had the shortened time constraints and I needed to ship my first cake. Fortunately, it was in the same state, albeit the largest continental state, but the same state nonetheless. Third, the theme was a bit of a challenge. Given a bit more time, I may have been able to incorporate the theme a bit better, however, I think it was still successful in the end.

The theme request was for a pink camouflage cake. Pink camo is really in these days, but I did have difficulty finding baby items. The ones I did find, I didn't have time to order, so I was left with what I could find locally, which much to my dismay, was not much. It would figure that much more recently I've seen many pink camouflage things that I could have used had they been available at the time. But I digress...


In any case, the cake started as many others, stacked three tiers high. I used pink and white basic designed blankets for the tiers so as not to distract from the overall camo theme. I then added pacifiers and teethers in different shades of pink to go along with the overall theme. The main item that maintained the theme for the cake was some adorable pink camouflage ribbon that I found. Paired with a darker pink ribbon it really set the tone for the whole cake. As an added little gift to my husband's cousin, I added a pink crocheted baby beanie that was made from a cotton yarn in various shades of pink. The beanie matched the cake wonderfully.


Despite the time constraints, I managed to complete the cake in record time and get it shipped out where it arrived in time for the shower. The recipient loved the cake, which is what I'm going for in most cases. I'm glad that I can complete some orders so quickly. It really is the exception rather than the norm, but when push comes to shove, I really try to do what I can to appease my customers. After all, without them, I can't do what I do.