Guitar Diaper Cake

My sister is helping a friend plan a baby shower for my brother and sister-in-law, and she asked me if I'd help with some decorations. I love the chance to be creative! The theme is kind of a doo-wop/rock-in-roll kind of thing. I found a lot of great ideas online by searching under a Rock-a-Bye Baby Shower.

One of my favorite ideas came from Pinterest (where else?). I love diaper cakes because, I figure, if I'm going to spend money on decorations, I'd like the decorations to be something they can use for the baby! Someone pinned a stunning diaper cake by litmeevents.com that includes a stuffed animal playing a drum set with a guitar, all made out of diapers and other baby items. Here's a link to that pin, which will take you to the website to check it out. It's $165, and while I think that is a fair price for the work and all the stuff included, I wanted to figure out how to make something similar for less.

I searched the internet and found a guitar diaper cake tutorial on YouTube by Thom's Crafts and Treats. It's a great resource to check out if you want to make this diaper cake. I made a few changes because I wanted to incorporate a few more baby items. For example, instead of pipe cleaners, I used baby spoons for the tuners.

For the guitar I made, here are the supplies I used:

1 34-pack of newborn diapers
1 pack of onesies - I used a 5 pack of white Gerber onesies
1 baby blanket
1 pack of baby spoons

1 car window shade for baby (I wanted to choose something off their registry that was in a long and narrow box to support the guitar neck, and this item fit the bill! You can use something else in a similar-shaped box). - OPTIONAL

Rubber bands

1 roll of fabric ribbon 1-2" wide 

1 roll of decorative masking tape - I found this in Target's business supply section

Wrapping paper
Clear tape
Yarn or thin ribbon
Cardboard

I started out following the instructions from Thom's Crafts and Treats. I used a cake pan as my mold, and I used 20 newborn diapers for the first part.

It took a little bit of work to figure out how to get the diapers in a good spiral! I used 3 rubber bands to secure it, and then I removed the cake pan mold.

I'd gotten a 5 pack of onesies. I used 0-3 month since that was listed on their registry, but you could use larger.

Hmmm. I kind of tucked and folded the onesie down, and then used more rubber bands to hold its shape.

I then made another, smaller circle using the remaining 14 diapers.

Then I tucked both of those circles into another onesie. At this stage, I'd used all 34 diapers, a ton of rubber bands, and 3 of the 5 onesies:

I then tucked the arms down and taped around the whole "cake" using the decorative masking tape (I really liked this stuff). The sides don't have to look perfect at this stage. There will be a blanket going around the edges. Mostly, I just wanted to keep the shape of the guitar.

Here's the blanket I'd picked up from their registry. Super soft!

The newborn diapers I used weren't that tall. In order to fold the blanket to the proper width, I had to fold it in half, and then into thirds.

I wrapped the blanket around the guitar and secured it with tape along the sides and a rubber band in the middle to help create its shape. If your blanket doesn't go all the way around, that's OK. The neck of the guitar will hide any gap at the top.

For the neck of the guitar, Thom cut out a piece of cardboard, wrapped it in a receiving blanket, and then used ribbon to create the frets. I thought it would be more fun to pick out a gift for the baby instead of using cardboard, so I went through their registry to find something with a long shape. I ended up going with this window shade.

Instead of using a receiving blanket, I thought it would be fun to make some leg warmers with guitar frets, since I crochet and have plenty of extra yarn. Here's the pattern to those guitar fret leg warmers.

When I finished the leg warmers, I realized they wouldn't fit over the window shade. Grrrr. I felt a little frustrated that my idea of using the window shade didn't work, and I ended up sliding the leg warmers over a plain piece of plain cardboard anyway. I wrapped the window shade in wrapping paper and secured the leg warmers to the top of that package. So, I didn't really need the shade at all, but it added a little more support to the neck and made it easier to attach the head and tuners to the guitar neck.

Next, I wanted  to work on the sound hole. Thom used a piece of black foam board for the sound hole. I ended up using the black plastic lid to my coffee can. Upcycle! I cut two slits in the circle, wide enough for my ribbon to go through.

Then, I started work on the strings. I cut 6 pieces of gray yarn for the strings. I decided to tape them directly to the "guitar" using the decorative masking tape for the bridge of the guitar. Each gray yarn string ran from the tape up the guitar neck, and then I taped them to the cardboard that was inside the leg warmers.

Then came the head and tuners. I wrapped a piece of cardboard with my wrapping paper. Then, I opened the baby spoons and arranged them like the tuners and taped them into place. I probably should have gotten a package of 6 spoons, but oh well.

I taped the head of the guitar with the spoons to the window shade package that I'd wrapped. I secured that to the neck of the guitar. I wrapped my ribbon around the guitar body, hiding the rubber band, and then I wove it into the slits I cut in my coffee-lid sound hole. I tied as pretty of a bow as I could and secured it with tape. I tied a second bow where the neck of the guitar met the head in order to hide all of the tape I had to use! I needed a little more support for the area where the neck met the body of the guitar, so I wrapped up the remaining 2 onesies in a long box, and used that package for added support. Here's a picture that shows the guitar pieced together:

And here it is, all finished and ready to go! My kids keep asking me if the baby gets to open it. ;-)

A Baby Shower to Remember

We did it! Even with all the snow, the roads stayed clear, and the baby shower was a go! All those weeks of planning were worth it, as Aminta and I pulled off a wonderful shower to celebrate Phuong & Cactus's baby.

Aminta was in charge of the decorations and totally made everything look cute.

Here is our table display:

I love how my storks looked on the table! You can find the stork tutorial here.

One of the most hilarious mishaps was the fruit salad I made, which people dubbed the "alien baby." I'd found it on Pinterest (you can find that pin here). But, here's the thing: I don't like most melons. I've never bought a honeydew melon before nor a cantaloupe. In my mind, they were the same thing: melons that don't taste good. Ha! So, I bought a honeydew thinking it was a cantaloupe. The morning of the shower, I went to peel back the melon skin only to discover it was green! Oops. So here is the now infamous alien baby fruit salad:

I think my baby bump cake ended up looking cute! I joked that I should have tucked a plastic baby into the tummy, kind of like people do for King Cakes at Mardi Gras. You can see how I made this cake by clicking here.

Deviled eggs are some of my favorite treats. I scoured the internet looking for ways to make them cute for a baby shower. I ended up finding a pin on how to make hot dog babies in the deviled eggs. I don't eat meat, and, frankly, I wasn't sure how good deviled eggs would be with hot dogs on them anyway. So, I just made a few into babies and left the rest plain.

Aren't those little duckies cute? I bought a package of them to decorate the punch I made! I got the rubber duckie idea from Pinterest, but I didn't want to use the punch recipe. I based my recipe off of one from Allrecipes.com. I used two frozen pink lemonade concentrate cans, one two-liter bottle of club soda, and four bottles of sparkling apple juice. To make it foam, I scooped a couple pints of berry sherbet on top. It tasted like sparkling strawberry lemonade! I was so amazed at how delicious and cute the punch ended up! I used another tip from Pinterest and froze slices of lemon in water in a cupcake tray.

Aminta made these cucumber sandwiches that were soooo good. Seriously, I think I ate half of them. She added some herbs and spices to cream cheese, spread it over rye bread, and topped it with fresh cucumbers. Not pictured are some miniature cherry danishes she brought in addition to a beautiful vegetable tray with dip and hummus.

We hung the diaper wreath near the entrance. It got a lot of compliments! Everyone made me feel so appreciated for everything. In case you missed the tutorial on this diaper wreath, you can find it here.

Aminta made these cute "lollipops" for Phuong out of washcloths and baby spoons. She poked them into a sand pail & shovel and filled it with Easter grass. It almost looks like flowers blooming! That idea also came from Pinterest, and there's a tutorial with that pin.

This is the start of the gift pile. Pictured are the "lollipops" by Aminta, the diaper tricycle that I made, the blanket I made, and the giraffe I made. 

Aiiiee! They are so cute! Seriously, Phuong and Cactus are two of the sweetest people in the world, and they are going to make the best parents. They loved the giraffe and tricycle diaper cake, making all of my hard work absolutely worth it.

Here's a close-up of the blanket. The pattern for this blanket is free, so if you like to crochet, you can find it through this pin.

More decorations from Aminta!

The balloons were loved and coveted by all the children.

Here are my best friends and me, ready to get the party started!

Phuong greeted all of her guests at the door. There were new friends and old friends and friends she hadn't seen a few years. We all had one thing in common... we all wanted to create a special day to shower our dear friend with gifts for her baby!

Oh.my.gosh! This is me with my friends from high school! It's been more than a decade, but we agreed that all of us looked exactly the same. 

We had favors for our guests, of course! I'd originally planned on making these fortune cookie favors (and did), but they weren't big enough to hold candy!

So, a couple days before the shower, I was really feeling the time crunch. My supportive husband helped me cut out a couple dozen paper shoes, which I then filled with the candy that was supposed to have filled the fortune cookies. You can find the paper shoe pattern on the Michael's website, or on the description of this Pinterest pin.

I found this poem online.

For games, we had people guess the width of Phuong's belly. We also had everyone fold a paper crane to string up on a mobile for the baby. Actually, folding paper cranes was a lot harder than I expected! I'm glad a couple people there knew what they were doing and were able to help everyone else out.

Here's Jennifer helping me with my crane:

I was able to string up all of the paper cranes while Phuong opened her gifts. The cranes have a gap in the bottom, and I couldn't figure out how to string them. The knotted thread wasn't thick enough to hold up the crane. Sayaka advised me to cut out circles. Using a needle, I thread the string first through a crane, then through a circle, and then I made a knot under the circles. It worked like a charm! You can get the how-to for this paper crane mobile from my Pinterest pin.

Here's our finished mobile:

Everything was perfect. The food, the company, the decorations, the happy couple... It was wonderful! I couldn't have done it without Aminta. Aminta kept everything moving smoothly. She made sure gifts were opened when they should be opened, she had people fill out their addresses on thank-you cards, she wrote down who gave what gift. She was so organized and on-top of everything! I might have had fun decorating the shower and preparing the food, but things would have been stagnant without Aminta's expertise. Thanks, Aminta!

And here are a few random shots from the shower: