Sunday, January 15, 2012

Diaper Bouquet

One of the reasons I created this blog was to post my craft projects and then share them through Pinterest. One "pin" I saw recently was a Diaper Bouquet. It's a different take on the Diaper Cake that has become a baby shower staple. Usually a "pin" will provide a link to a blog or website that shows the step-by-step instructions on how to do the project. This, however, was just a photo with this description: "The diapers are rolled around wooden skewers and secured with clear rubber bands, and then pushed into a foam ball which is hidden and wedged into the vase. Accent with tulle." Sounded easy enough.
On my weekly grocery trip to Shop 'n Save, I found 12" wooden skewers with the kitchen tools. I also picked up a bag of store-brand diapers that were on sale. On a separate trip to Dollar Tree, I bought a vase, three bunches of silk flowers, ribbon, little hair elastics, and extra-large storage bags. I wanted to give the mom a way to store the diapers when she took apart the bouquet. One of my biggest DIY stumbling blocks is that I need instructions. Even when I cook, I need a recipe; I can't just wing it. But with no instructions for this, there was a boatload of trial-and-error, right from the start. At first, I laid the skewer on the diaper, rolled it up, put an elastic around it, and held it up. The diaper slid down the skewer. Rats. I studied the diapers and discovered that when folded, the waistband had little pockets at the very top. So I slid the skewer into the pocket and then rolled it up.



I started putting the diapers in the vase, and realized it was not going to be able to handle the load. Part of the reason was that I had bought size 2 diapers, thinking that everyone would buy newborn or size 1 diapers. However, for this project, I think the smaller the diaper, the better. Next time I'll use newborn size.
I rolled the rest of the diapers, separated the three colors of flowers and then attached one stem of each color flower onto a skewer. That was as far as I could go until I could find a replacement for the vase. Off to Dollar Tree I went, where I found a wide basket and some floral foam. When I got home, I hot glued the foam to the basket. (The picture shows two donut-shaped pieces of foam, but I only needed one. Another round piece of foam was stacked on top of the one in the donut.)
Now it was time to arrange the "bouquet". All of this time I had forgotten how bad I am at flower arranging! What was I thinking? Again, lots of trial and error here. It was a good thing I bought cheapo skewers, because they needed to be trimmed just like flower stems. I was able to break them like twigs. I just shoved the diaper skewers into the foam until they looked ok. Then I pushed the flower skewers in places that looked good to me.
Finally, I took the ribbon and wrapped it around the bottom row of skewers to camouflage them. The remaining ribbon became a big bow for the front.

Voila! It's not nearly as pretty as the original, but with no instructions to go by, I'm pleased. This is much more fun than just handing over a gift-wrapped bag of diapers.

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