At church right now, there are more expectant mothers than you can shake a pregnancy test stick at.  I've been carefully avoiding the weekly emails for baby shower after baby shower because in most cases, I couldn't pick the person out of a line up if I had been mugged by her that morning.  But I knew I had to end up knowing one of them, eventually.  In fact, the latest one, I work with rather closely because she helps me teach the teenage girls.  So not only was I invited to the shower, but all the girls I work with were invited too.  And as the default person who does such things I wanted to help them create a baby shower gift they could give to her as a group.  The last time someone had a baby, we had the girls tie her a quilt.  The finished product was passable, but nothing special.  And really, I was given about eighty-eleven quilts at The Dormouse's baby shower, all of which I appreciated, but only about half of which I was actually able to use unless I was building a blanket fort.  So I really wanted something more useful - or at least more unique - for these girls to work together to create.  

Enter, the diaper bouquet.  Oh how I love the internet.

I've made diaper cakes before, but that's more a one person job.  This was awesome because the girls could all work on it at the same time.

 Here's what I used:
  • two packages of newborn sized diapers (I bought one package of forty, then ran out and had to go buy another which I used about half of - so probably about sixty total diapers)
  • heavy glass vase ($4 at the craft store)
  • 4 inch Styrofoam ball (or whatever size just looks right)
  • Styrofoam cone (mostly big enough to fit the inside of the vase)
  • clear elastic bands
  • florist's plant stakes (or wooden dowels)
  • random ribbon or what have you

 Basically, you stick the cone into the vase upside down and cut it to fit if necessary.  You'll want it to fit snugly so it won't wobble.  Once I sized the cone to the vase, I wrapped the cone up with a wide ribbon before sticking it in the vase so you couldn't see the Styrofoam.  It was just what was handy, but you could probably just leave it and fill the vase with confetti or marbles or sand, or candy or whatever you wanted to use to hide the Styrofoam later.  I skewered the cone with a couple of plant stakes that stuck out a few inches so I could push the ball on over the stakes to keep it in place.  Then I had to take it all apart and cut the cone down a bit more to make it fit just at the mouth of the vase where it looked right.  So you might want to test it all out first before poking those sticks into the foam.

I had the girls each take a diaper, roll it up tightly around the end of a stake and secure it in place with an elastic band.  Once that was done, they tied a pink ribbon around the roll. They did that until all the diapers were rolled up.  If you wanted to tie ribbons around the center of each and every diaper, I suppose the elastic wouldn't need to be clear.  But what we ended up doing with tying ribbon around about 2/3 of the diapers and leaving the rest with just the elastic for diversity... and laziness, I suppose.  

 Then what you do is drive the non-diaper end of each stake into the foam ball, arranging them like a flower bouquet until you either use all the diapers and have to buy more (me) or fill up as much of the space as you want because you planned correctly (not me).

Once all the diaper stakes are in place, cut up some squares of crinoline, ribbon, stiff fabric, whathaveyou, roll them and push in between the diapers to fill in any spaces where you still see the Styrofoam or just where it looks like it needs it. Raid the ribbon box and poke some pieces of ribbon in there too for variety.

 Slap on a bow.

Ta da:


Seriously, this is the coolest thing I've made in a very long time and it took us all of forty minutes.  Would have been less if it had just been me.  But no one needs to know that.  Shhh.