Beer cake

Okay, this is a fun one! My boyfriend turned 30 on Valentine's Day and I decided to make a beer cake as a decoration at the party I was throwing for him. The party was going to be at a bar, so I found this to be a very appropriate decoration. This is a very simple craft, so don't be intimidated!

Materials needed: cardboard cutouts measuring 8, 10 and 12 inches in diameter (one for each tier), 30 beers of your choice (I used tall boy canned beer, but this would work with regular cans, too. I think you could probably use bottles, as well, but might need some extra support between tiers), assorted materials to decorate.

I used a large cardboard box from one of my many weekly amazon deliveries to cut out the cardboard bases for the tiers. I am not the best at circle drawing/cutting, so my cutouts are far from perfect.

I decided to wrap the cardboard tier cut outs in tissue paper to add some color to the beer cake. You could also use wrapping paper, construction paper, or even paint to  add color to the cardboard pieces.

I alternated colors for each tier.

For tier one I used 11 cans.

Tier 2 was made up of 12 cans. You could also put the extra 3 cans I used in the middle on the first tier. In order to truly use 30 beers, I found you have to hide a few in there.

The top tier is made up of 7 beers. 6 go around the outside and 1 in the middle. 

I used some yellow fabric to wrap the top tier. It is tied in the back, which also helps keep the top tier together for easy transportation. I hot glued the bow on the front of the top tier. I printed out the "30 beers for 30 years" and used some black and blue card stock to mount it. I hole punched the card stock and ran a yellow ribbon through it to tie it to the second tier. I used some blue card stock to cut out a 3 and a 0. Using craft sticks, I hot glued the number cut outs to the front center beer. You can have a lot of fun decorating this, as there is no wrong way to do it! I just used stuff I already had to decorate mine. 

Happy beer cake making!

P.S. One of these days I'll have a dedicated craft area in our house so all of my photos won't be on my wooden floors!

Captain & Coke

This craft was inspired by a need for a male's 40th birthday party gift. The birthday boy is a huge fan of captain and coke, but you could really use any sort of alcohol (that comes in mini bottles). I am not sure if coke makes any other types of pop in the retro packaging, though. 

Here are the items I used: 6 mini bottles of Captain (they are very cheap at super Walmart! I think <$2/mini bottle), a basket bag from the dollar store, a 6 pack of coca cola in the reto packaging with glass bottles, some ribbon, and an embellishment for the top of the basket bag.

I used red and white striped ribbon to tie each captain bottle to the coca cola bottles. There is a lip just under the bottle cap of the mini captain bottle that made it easy to secure the ribbon. For this part, it might be helpful to recruit someone else to help you tie the bottle tight enough to stay on!

Finished product!

All that was left to do was to put the gift in the basket bag and tie on an embellishment! You'll notice I used a different bow than the one in my original "things I used" photo. I thought the red looked better than the blue/white one I originally intended on using. 

Creative birthday gifts like these are perfect for friend's parties. They add a little personal touch, but are still fairly inexpensive! I've found that people are mostly impressed with the effort I put into gift giving. You'd be amazed at the level of appreciation you get for just taking 15 minutes or so to throw something like this together!

Happy Birthday-crafting!