When I make a diaper cake, I like to give it as personal a touch as possible. If I'm making a cake for a friend of mine, making it personal is usually not a problem. The color and theme will typically match the nursery, if I'm lucky enough to hear how the planning of the nursery is going. As I LOVE hearing about decorating projects, and of late I LOVE hearing about decorating nurseries, I usually am lucky enough to hear about it.
When I'm not privy to the joys, or tribulations, of the nursery project, I will rely on what I know about the mother, or father's, hobbies or tastes. A favorite color, a favorite flower, a love of owls or of bunnies. Even a favorite book or movie can lend a direction to the cake.
In this instance, I knew neither the mother or the father. The commissioner of the cake didn't know anything about the shower theme or what the nursery would look like. They couldn't tell me anything to go with on the cake beyond the color gray. Gray flowers to be particular. That's all. Gray flowers and whatever I thought would look pretty.
You'd think a simple request like that would be easy. But having no ideas or restrictions can sometimes be more trouble than overly specific ones. And what could be more vague than gray? Color-wise it's neither black nor white, its the epitome of indecisiveness, and it's not the first color I think of when I think of beautiful baby girls or bouncing baby boys.
Now, I don't know about you, but I couldn't think of a single flower that came in gray. Googling gray flowers simply brought up black and white images of all kinds of flowers that came in every shade but gray. Even several trips to every craft store within a half hour drive of my house couldn't produce a single rose or daisy in gray. I suppose I could have painted or dyed some white flowers gray, but tucking possibly toxic paint covered flowers in between the diapers didn't sound like a good idea, and spending more time and dealing with the mess of dyes didn't appeal either.
I did manage to luck out and find some gray ribbon flowers in the wedding section of the last store I decided to try. They were pretty, formed from swirls of sheer gray tulle with a silver pearl in the center. But they were also small. The pearls I loved, and picked up some bigger ones to somehow incorporate into the cake. But it was obvious that the gray flowers were not going to be the dominating factor of the cake. So I opted instead to focus the gray in the accents. I picked out a couple pretty patterns of ribbon with gray in them (again, surprisingly not a lot of choices with that color), and then hoped I could figure out the rest of the cake from the collection of supplies I already had in my craft room.
After assembling the diapers into a three-tiered cake and putting on the selected ribbons, I had another direction to go in. One of the ribbons I had picked up had pink in it. Again, not original, but I attempted to break up the monotony by using several different shades of pink. I even tucked in some pink butterflies. Then I stared at the pink monstrosity and felt rather uninspired.
When I'm not privy to the joys, or tribulations, of the nursery project, I will rely on what I know about the mother, or father's, hobbies or tastes. A favorite color, a favorite flower, a love of owls or of bunnies. Even a favorite book or movie can lend a direction to the cake.
In this instance, I knew neither the mother or the father. The commissioner of the cake didn't know anything about the shower theme or what the nursery would look like. They couldn't tell me anything to go with on the cake beyond the color gray. Gray flowers to be particular. That's all. Gray flowers and whatever I thought would look pretty.
You'd think a simple request like that would be easy. But having no ideas or restrictions can sometimes be more trouble than overly specific ones. And what could be more vague than gray? Color-wise it's neither black nor white, its the epitome of indecisiveness, and it's not the first color I think of when I think of beautiful baby girls or bouncing baby boys.
Now, I don't know about you, but I couldn't think of a single flower that came in gray. Googling gray flowers simply brought up black and white images of all kinds of flowers that came in every shade but gray. Even several trips to every craft store within a half hour drive of my house couldn't produce a single rose or daisy in gray. I suppose I could have painted or dyed some white flowers gray, but tucking possibly toxic paint covered flowers in between the diapers didn't sound like a good idea, and spending more time and dealing with the mess of dyes didn't appeal either.
I did manage to luck out and find some gray ribbon flowers in the wedding section of the last store I decided to try. They were pretty, formed from swirls of sheer gray tulle with a silver pearl in the center. But they were also small. The pearls I loved, and picked up some bigger ones to somehow incorporate into the cake. But it was obvious that the gray flowers were not going to be the dominating factor of the cake. So I opted instead to focus the gray in the accents. I picked out a couple pretty patterns of ribbon with gray in them (again, surprisingly not a lot of choices with that color), and then hoped I could figure out the rest of the cake from the collection of supplies I already had in my craft room.
After assembling the diapers into a three-tiered cake and putting on the selected ribbons, I had another direction to go in. One of the ribbons I had picked up had pink in it. Again, not original, but I attempted to break up the monotony by using several different shades of pink. I even tucked in some pink butterflies. Then I stared at the pink monstrosity and felt rather uninspired.
So what was it that gave me the spark to finish up the rest of the cake? A name. Margaret Grace. A bit old fashioned, but classically sweet. I decided that putting that adorable name on the cake would make it a little less thrown together and a little more special. I had elegant sticker letters in silver, which brought out more of the gray and gave me another idea.
At this point, I had no topper for the cake, having no clue what kind of random subject matter I could use, and no luck at all finding a pair of baby shoes in gray. But the silver of the letters made me want to make more of the cake shine, so I grabbed a bird statue (of which my craft room is overrun with) and painted it in silver.
The extra silver gave the cake the balance I needed to make the gray stand out as much, if not more than, the pink, and also lent it a bit of class worthy of a classy name. I went from uninspired to girly and dressy in an instant and the finished cake turned out much better than I had hoped.
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