After watching a few tutorials and looking at endless pictures of diaper cakes online, I decided to do my diaper cake my own way. I compiled bits and pieces of each one I saw to come up with my own method of making one. So here it goes…

List of supplies:

Diapers – I used 92 size 1 Pampers for my cake. You can choose whatever kind you want.
Rubberbands (large & small)
3-5 12 inch wooden dowels
1  3 foot dowel
Wide ribbon of your choice
Hot Glue Gun
Decorations of your choice (baby items, bows, etc.)
Base (cake base or cardboard cutout)

You start with the diapers. You roll them up and rubberband them around the middle to keep their shape. When you are finished, you end up with 92 rolled diapers about 4 inches long each.

Next up, you make your layers of the cake. I chose to do a 4 tier cake. You can make yours 3 or even 5 if you chose to use more diapers. You place them together and use a larger rubber band to hold them all together creating a circle. You can make your tiers any size you want but here is what mine ended up being…

first: 3 at first – I later added a 4th
Second: 10
Third: 29
Fourth: 50

I didn’t really aim for a certain number in each tier. I just added them until I got the shape I was looking for. I did leave a few “holes” in the third tier to add some personal touches later.

I also used some wodden dowels to keep my tiers together. Some of the tutorials I saw used baby bottles in the middle which is doable as well. But since I wanted to use all 92 diapers I bought, I chose to use dowels.

I chose to stack the bottom 2 and then poke the shorter dowels through in order to keep them centered. 

When all four tiers are assembled, use the tallest dowel to go through the center to keep it all together. Something else I did for esthetic purposes was to turn the diapers so that the cleanest side is showing out. You don’t really want the side where the diaper comes together to be showing. Turning them all to face the same way makes it look much cleaner in the end.

Now that it’s all together, the rest is just decorating!

First, I added some personal touches to even my third tier out. I found some cute little baby socks at Target for $1 a pair and also some little hats in the clearance section which I rolled up and added into the tier. Once I got them where I wanted them, I began with the ribbon.

I chose to use 4 different colors of ribbon since those were the main colors we used at the shower. I rolled it out and then cut a piece long enough to cover the rubber bands around each tier. I then hot glued the ribbon together in the back.

I also hot glued some little  bows which I made out of some white ribbon to the front of each ribbon.

Next,  I stacked my tiers on my base. Now, I mentioned before you can buy a cake base or make one out of cardboard. I decided to buy a base for a $1.99 at Party City. If I had some wrapping paper and some cardbaord, it would have been just as easy to make one to save some money. This base is 16 inches wide.

My most favorite part to add to the cake were these adorable animals I found at Hobby Lobby for 64 cents each! Since the baby’s room has an animal theme, when I saw them I knew they had to go on the cake. I hot glued some short wooden dowels to the backs of them and stuck them into the cake.

I also added some baby items like baby shampoo, baby powder, baby lotion, and baby oil in the bottom tier to add more personalization to the cake.

I then toped it off with a teathing ring.

At first I had trouble figuring out what to put on top of the cake, I saw a lot of people putting stuffed animals on them or a toy of some sort or even a little pair of shoes which I thought was really cute! But I decided to go with little Ryder’s initials. I also found these wooden letters at Hobby Lobby for 99 cents each and painted them a bright blue which I already had.

I hot glued them together and then to the top dowel coming out of the top. I snapped off the excess dowel once I got the letters where I wanted them.

I was really happy with the final product and it made a great decoration as well as gift for the gift table.

So, there you have it! A simple, cute gift idea for under $40! I highly recommend it for your next baby shower!!