Look What the Stork Brought! Diapers for the Baby Shower!

I'm starting to get things ready for my friend's baby shower this weekend. I bought two packs of 50 diapers to make the diaper tricycle for her shower. It called for 55 diapers, but I ended up using 52. It also called for 2 receiving blankets, and I bought a pack of 5. The tricycle needed 2 bibs, and I bought a pack of 3. So, I've been getting crafty with my leftover supplies! I'd found a really cute pin on Pinterest that showed a stork carrying a sack of diapers (here: http://pinterest.com/pin/216383957067889576/). Unfortunately, like some links on Pinterest, clicking the image takes me nowhere. I had to figure out how to make it myself!

Here are the storks I came up with:

To make these, you need:

*15 diapers for each bundle (I used size 1). If you want a smaller bundle, you could probably skip the  bottom row and just use 10 diapers.
*rubber bands (about 16 for each bundle)
*ribbon
*white cardstock
*yellow cardstock

*pink or blue cardstock, or whatever color works for the shower
*glue
*scissors
*floral wire (or another way to secure your stork to the bundle)
*googly eyes (optional. you can draw the eyes in, if you'd prefer)

I have a huge roll of floral wire, so I thought I would use it up on this project. It went OK. I decided to just use regular rubber bands for the second one, and that went much easier. It also looked better! On the image above, the one on the left with the tighter bundles used rubber bands. The one on the right used floral wire.

I used wire to wrap around each bundle. It held them together very effectively, but it took a long time and didn't keep the diapers tightly rolled. That ended up being a problem at the end when I needed to fit a receiving blanket around the whole thing.

For the second bundle, I just used rubber bands around each diaper. I used one piece of floral wire around the whole bundle to secure them together, but I'm sure you can skip that step.

I folded a receiving blanket in half, and then I folded it into thirds, keeping it long but narrow. I wrapped that around my bundle of diapers and secured the top tightly with a rubber band, just like you would a ponytail.
I had blue ribbon leftover from something that I can't recall, and I decided to put it to use here. There can be touches of blue even at a girl's baby shower, right? Sure! So, I wrapped the ribbon around the receiving blanket and tied it with a bow, hiding the rubber band.

Now comes the stork part. This is the part where you laugh at me. See, I'm sure the person who originally made this stork used a Cricut machine. I actually drew the stork by hand on a piece of computer paper. I taped that down over a piece of white cardstock and cut out my stork. I did the same thing with yellow cardstock for the legs and beak. I picked a cute pink-with-polka dot card stock for the hat. Now, I am not claiming to be the best at drawing this stork. I'm sure there are many finer artists out there who can do a better job. But, for those of you who need it, here is a very rough drawing of the stork that I made so you can print it and use it to cut your pieces. Notice I didn't include a cut-out for the circle tag. I cannot draw a circle, so you're on your own there.

Amazingly, I even had two leftover googly eyes (again, from who-knows-what project I must have done in the past). If you don't have googly eyes, you can just draw them on! Or, if you're heading to the craft store anyway for supplies, you can pick up a small package for less than a dollar.

I glued those pieces all together. The head was a little heavy, so I glue the corner of the hat to the body to hold everything together. I then cut out a pretty bad circle (you can see how not-round my circles are) and clipped a hole in the top with a hole puncher. I wasn't about to cut out tiny letters by hand, so I wrote my messages on it with a Sharpie. On one, I wrote congratulations to the couple. On the other, I plan on writing their daughter's name with her due date. Then, I thread a ribbon through it, knotted the ribbon, and hid the knot behind the circle. I draped that over the beak. I took a piece of floral wire, bent it carefully around the neck (I avoided bending the stork's neck, thankfully), and then poked the ends through the bundle of diapers. You can see the wire around the base of the neck. When I set up for the shower, I'll try to strategically place the ribbon ends over it to hide the wire.

I'm very, very happy with how this came out. All of the materials I used were leftover except for the cardstock. I think I spent $2 on the cardstock. So, these are my $2 table decorations.