Craft Fair 2012 Prep (Part 2)

As November and the annual craft fair drew closer, I still had a lot of work to do. I had most of the larger cakes I wanted to have available for the show, but I still needed a 2-tier boy cake and some buggies to replace ones I had sold. I also wanted to try some single tier cakes.

The two tier boy cake was one I was really excited about. I had some adorable sporty blankets in stock and I was thrilled to be able to use them. I used the colors red and blue as accents and created a super cute 2-tier cake complete with little baseball shoes on top. I also found some bath squirters that were shaped like sports balls and couldn't pass them up. Add some sporty accents and ribbons and I had a truly adorable cake for anyone's "Little Sport."

My next project was buggies. I had a gender neutral buggy on hand, but was in need of a blue one and a pink one. These are great little gifts and very popular because they contain a lot of baby items in a small package. I used some single blankets I had for these and used solid wash cloths to pair with patterned blankets. I have slightly changed the way that I make the structure of the buggies so they are easier for the expectant mama to use, but the changes are only internal and the exterior of the gift looks just as adorable as always.

After the buggies were done, I was happy to find that I still had some time to create some 1-tier cakes for the craft fair. For these, I was able to use some extra diapers that I had trouble putting in other cakes (because I don't typically mix brands - but will if requested). I made three 1-tier cakes, boy, girl, and gender neutral. These cakes were single layer with 10-15 diapers, a blanket, and several baby items added to them. They were each topped with paper shred for a complete simple gift. They really rounded out my offerings for the craft fair.

With the cakes finished (and finishing a rush order I had in the middle of this - keep an eye out for that blog), I had just enough time to put together a cake for donation. The craft fair always sponsored a raffle where they asked vendors to donate an item to the raffle. For this cake, I made up a 2-tier gender neutral mini cake that was green and yellow and contained many baby items. It was a great gift on it's own and a mini version of what you'd expect on larger cakes that I make.

I was finally done with all my items for the craft fair. It took a lot of time and creative scheduling to make it all in the time I had allotted. I hope for the 2013 show, I'm better prepared and don't quite have the time crunch. I'm happy with how these cakes came out and I'm happy for the opportunity to create more cakes to show what I can do.

A beautiful bouquet

Many diaper cakes I've seen contain diaper tiers and are lavishly decorated with silk flowers and ribbons. They are really beautiful all things considered. The thing that keeps me from designing this type of diaper cake is that the decorations add cost to the final product, but don't necessarily add to the value. I prefer to use baby items to decorate and embellish the cakes so the new mom has more items at her disposal.

Recently, however, I decided to see if I could meld the two concepts. In the past, I have made baby bouquets using washcloths and socks to resemble flowers and presenting them in baskets and vases. In one cake, I used some socks in rose form for embellishment. I wanted to take it one step further though and make the flowers more central to the cake decoration.

For this initial experiment, I wanted to see how a flower bouquet would work for a cake topper. I used washcloths to make several roses and some washcloths with baby utensils to make calla lillies and gathered them into a bouquet that then embellished the top of a one tier cake. More washcloths were used for the bouquet base to emulate leaves for the bouquet. I didn't add a ton of other decorations since I was focusing on the bouquet, but the tier was wrapped with prefold cloth diapers/burp cloths and then decorated with simple ribbon.

The cake turned out beautifully. I really am happy with the final look and from this I will probably work on cleaning up the appearance of the flowers and perhaps experimenting with having the flowers cascade down the cake. As excited as I am about these prospects, there is one important factor I need to consider. This uses A LOT of washcloths. It's not bad, per se, just something to think about. I can't wait to experiment some more and see how it all turns out. I'm glad to offer a more "refined" look to the cakes I can make and still keep them functional.

Going Green

Quite some time ago (last June, I think) I was asked if it was possible to make a diaper cake with cloth diapers. I happen to be in a mom group where a number of the moms cloth diaper (including myself). As environmentally conscious moms, they were curious if the craft could be applied in a manner using cloth diapers for other mamas that planned to "go green." Without thinking about it much, I figured it shouldn't be much of a challenge and proceeded to go home and experiment.

I don't use prefold diapers - but I had several that I use for burp cloths - and I figured these would work best for making a cake. I folded and rolled the prefold diapers as I did the disposables and built them into a cake. A burp cloth  was then used to wrap around the cake. I tied it with a decorative bow and added teethers and a squeaky duck as accents. Since I had a limited number of diapers, the cake was only a 1-tier cake, but it gives an idea of what a cloth diaper diaper cake would look like. A larger multi-tier cake can certainly be made. Likely in that case, I'd use different sizes for each tier and possibly place something in the center of the larger tiers if the diapers weren't bulky enough since the number of diapers in a cloth diaper diaper cake doesn't need to be as extensive as you'd need with disposable. This cake was just a display/test cake. I wanted to make sure that my initial thought that it was possible was correct. The cake came out really cute. Although, despite the fact that I had people asking about it, I still have yet to have someone order one. Like I mentioned, that was last June (and I can't believe I hadn't blogged about it yet...).

More recently on the diaper cake forum I joined, the discussion again presented itself. Are cloth diaper diaper cakes possible? Had anyone made them? So, of course, I responded with info about mine and suggestions like making sure to use the right kind of prefolds (assuming the new mom wanted to use prefolds) and recommending using different sizes. One of the people asked about making the cloth diaper diaper cake in a spiral style and questioning the stability of such a cake and if such a thing was possible. Me and my big mouth replied that of course it was possible. I couldn't see why it wouldn't be feasible. This, of course, gave me another project. I should put my money where my mouth is and actually make one before I start telling everyone it can be done. So, again, I gather my prefold diapers and fold them up and wrap them in a spiral configuration. I was right, it was possible. For this cake, I went completely simple. I spiraled the single tier cake and decorated it with ribbon and crinkle paper. I had to make sure that the diapers were visible in the spiral form so the forum members could see it put together. In practice, I might use more baby items to finish off the cake, but for demonstration purposes, this was enough.

I'm definitely happy to have these under my belt in the off chance that someone wants to order one. The down-side to such a project is a significant cost increase for such a cake because of the cost of diapers. I'm also not sure how many diapers would be needed in a cake like this if it was multiple tiers. These small cakes had 7 and 8 diapers respectively and were made with newborn diapers. It'd be an adventure to make one, and I'd be excited for the project. I probably will experiment with my other diapers at some point since I have more of them to see how that would work. I'm excited about the possibilities with these cakes especially considering it's a very specific market that I can be a part of.