Blue Flower Bouquet Diaper Cake

diapers (size 1), string, 6" cake pan, ribbon, tissue paper (blue and green), gift card

 

Focus-tissue paper flowers and wrap

 

Here's where this diaper cake idea started.  This diaper cake was for a mom of five, so I wasn't sure what she would need.  I figured one can't go wrong with giving diapers and gift cards!  I didn't want to just hand her a bag of diapers, so I started looking around YouTube for a creative way to wrap them.  I don't remember how, but I stumbled across this site and liked the look of the "vase".  Obviously, I used diapers instead of toilet paper rolls.  I then used this site for the tissue paper flowers.  Again, here's the link to the diaper stacking site.  For the flowers, I added leaves by cutting small rectangles, folding them in the middle (like you would for gift bags) so that all the corners are close together, and then taping each to the back of a flower.  The gift card was taped to a skewer, but I suggest getting the skewer through the diaper cake first.

 

This diaper cake was decorated June 2012.

Flower Power Cake

9" White and Funfetti round, Buttercream frosting

Techniques Used-basketweave, rope border, carnation, Wilton rose, swirl star flower, rosebud, vines

Focus-letting someone else design and try out some techniques

While visiting family, my sister wanted to decorate a cake.  I asked her to make a design and then we figured out the finer details.  It turned out pretty much how she designed it, except that we had to change out daffodils for yellow carnations.  On the sides, the front half has vines and little flowers.  The back half is just basketweave.

 It was neat to see how the cake developed.  We started off with making flowers.  The flowers were mainly done by me, but that was mostly because I messed up the batch of frosting, so it was harder to manage.  I put more butter than shortening, and there was more powdered sugar than needed.  Anyway, all it did really was make the frosting more sensitive to temperature than usual, and it was also stiffer than usual.  I also discovered that I don't like how the flowers look when using flower formers. I think the formers are more for apple blossoms and daisies. 

After the flowers, we prepared the cake for decorating.  Part of the design was to have the casually smooth top in the front.  Since an assortment of flowers would be towards the back, we didn't need to casually smooth the entire top.  My sister did the basketweave, and I think she did a pretty good job.

After that, my sister did a rope border on the top and bottom and then we assorted the flowers on top.  We went through a surprising number of batches of frosting.  I think altogether I made 12 cups.  All of it didn't end up on the cake, partly because the frosting was so good that other family members couldn't stop eating it, and it was also the plan to make cupcakes, but we didn't get that far.  What's funny is the rope borders are blue and purple because we ran out of white, so we thought we'd better use up some of the other frosting. 

Next in line was adding the vines.  Once those were in place, we added little pink rosebuds, blue swirl star flowers, and a couple yellow and purple carnations to the vines.  Then there were leaves and the cake was finished. 

This cake was decorated July 2011.

Sunshine Flourishes Cake

8" round vanilla cake, buttercream frosting

Techniques Used-carnations, ruffles, shell border, leaves

Focus-carnations, ruffles

I got this cake idea from The Wilton School Decorating Cakes-A Reference & Idea Book. The cake in the book had ridges from a decorating comb, but unfortunately, I didn't make the frosting thin enough. Also, the ruffle is with a bigger tip (Tip 127D), but the local craft stores didn't carry the tip needed. If you plan on doing this cake, I would see about ordering the tip online.

I think carnations are easier flowers to make than roses, and more unique from flower to flower as well.  You can probably find pictures or videos online, but it's basically a bunch of zigzag motions over a mound of frosting.

The ruffle was easier than I expected.  Granted, it may be harder with a larger tip.  I ended up using tip 125, a larger size of a rose tip (104).  I practiced the ruffle on the bottom of a plate many times before doing it on the real thing.  I focused on keeping the wide end of the tip on the cake and then moving the pointed end up and down. 

This cake was decorated May 2011.