Baby Shower Crafts

Okay, so I can't take credit for this one at all. This was my cousin's idea. She found the idea for an alphabet wall in the nursery on pinterest, and thought it would be fun if at her baby shower, all of the attendees painted/decorated a letter of the alphabet to put up in the nursery. Super cute idea, right!? Anyways, even though I didn't do any of the planning/supply purchasing for the project, I wanted to share since it's such a fun idea!

My cousin and aunt bought a variety of all the letters needed to complete the alphabet. In order to make the alphabet wall look unique, they didn't just buy all of the letters in the same font/style/material. Some of the letters were made of particle board and were relatively flat, while others were made of cardboard and were quite three dimensional. Take a peek in the photos below. 

Some of the items my cousin and aunt purchased to help decorate the letters were: modge podge, stickers that matched the theme/colors of the nursery, paint, paint brushes, buttons, other larger embellishments (flowers, etc.), and scrapbook paper. 

Here are some of the letters drying after guests at the shower painted them. You can see the A covered in hot glued buttons, the I painted on the sides and then modge podged with scrapbook paper to add a pattern. The R and the G were carefully painted with designs, while the V and the U have a few stickers stuck on them. Some turned out much cuter than others...obviously ;)

This is the letter I painted. I used the pink paint that you can see in the photo. Once that dried, I painted it with a clear glitter paint. Finally, I added a flower embellishment and a few pearl stickers to the ends. Elegant and simple!

Happy Baby Shower crafting!

Bridal Shower Cake

More "wedding season" appropriate crafts: a bridal shower cake!

Essentially, this is the bridal shower version of a diaper cake. If you have to give a gift, why not make it fun?!

For this bridal shower cake, I picked all items on the bride's registry at Bed Bath & Beyond. Here are the items I used: Oxo rotating utensil holder, 9.5" Pyrex pie dish, Bamboo utensil set, Calphalon dish cloth (wasabi), 2 Calphalon plaid kitchen towels (wasabi), purple silk ribbon, and a 4x4 box from the dollar tree.

The box from the dollar store was a blue gift box that came with a sparkly covered top. I had it in my gift wrapping box and it was the perfect size to hold the utensil holder at the second tier. You could use a lot of different things to do this - a cylindrical piece of foam, a few toilet paper rolls rubber banded together - be creative!

To build this, I took the dollar tree 4x4 box and turned it upside down on the middle of the pie dish. I then began wrapping the kitchen towels around the box to hide it. I took all the tags off - I felt confident doing this since the items were on her registry. I really only did it so that the end result looked cleaner, you can choose to leave them on. I wrapped 2 kitchen towels around the first tier and secured them with the purple ribbon you can see in the photo. Then, i stacked the utensil holder on top of the upside down dollar tree box and  filled it with the bamboo utensils. I folded the dish towel like a fan, and propped it up behind the utensils. 

The final thing I did was use a basket bag to wrap this up and keep everything held together. I recommend the one from the dollar tree - it works just fine and it's only a dollar!

I think I spent $40 on this gift overall (with the utilization of some bed bath and beyond coupons) and I think the presentation really classes up the gift. It also made it easier to buy a random selection of some of the lesser priced items on their registry and still be able to pull it all together nicely. 

Happy Bridal Shower-ing!

Monkey Diaper Cake

I've been dying to make a diaper cake. I think this is a gift that every crafter should master, so when I found out my cousin was pregnant I knew immediately that I would make one for her shower. I did a lot of research on pinterest - I wanted to find the perfect design for this diaper cake. Many diaper cakes you see have many little shampoo bottles, pacifiers, etc. tucked in with the diapers, but most of the ones I saw like that, as beautiful as they were, they looked too cluttered. Also, I was going to have to travel 5 hours with the diaper cake, so I was worried about all the stuff falling out. I ultimately decided on a very simple design.

What I used: 36 pack of seventh generation diapers from Target, 3 inch turquoise ribbed ribbon, 1.5 inch purple silk ribbon, a half yard of fabric, a CoCaLa stuffed monkey, ribbons, a bag of assorted rubber bands, hot glue.

Making a diaper cake is actually very easy. I bought a pack of 36 diapers and I ended up with a handful leftover. I started by rolling the diapers and rubber banding them. I placed a paper towel roll in the middle and began grouping the rolled up diapers in circles around it. I think I did about 4 circles for the bottom tier. I grouped each circle of diapers with a large rubber band, until I got to the largest circle around the bottom tier. I didn't have a rubber band big enough for the largest circle, so I used a scrap piece of thin ribbon to hold it together. You build the second and third tiers the same way - using rubber bands to hold each of the circles of rolled up diapers. The paper towel roll in the middle helps hold the tiers together. You can also use a useful item like baby shampoo or baby lotion instead of a paper towel roll.

Once the tiers were all built, I began with the decoration. I planned to use both fabric and ribbon to decorate the diaper cake to have a little bit of a difference in textures and patterns. The fabric brought a nice pattern to the cake and the ribbon really classed it up. I cut the fabric in a width to almost completely cover the rolled up diapers. To secure the fabric, I hot glued the ends together. I did the same thing with the turquoise ribbon. I didn't want to tie it because I wanted it to look seamless.

The last step to this diaper cake was to secure the plush monkey to it. I wrapped the monkeys legs around the bottom tier and used the purple ribbon around the monkey and the top tier. Overall, I think it came together really well!

Happy Baby Showering!