Barbecue-Themed Diaper Cake

A friend commissioned me to do a diaper cake for a gender reveal she was helping to throw. They didn't exactly have a theme, but they were having it at a barbecue. So I took that as a theme for the diaper cake. And went through a lot of ideas of how exactly to use that theme. And with a short time frame.

I considered grilling utensils. Fire. A grill. Picnic tables.

And that was my first breakthrough. I found red and white checkered ribbon, reminiscent of those distinctive and traditional table cloths.

With a base color I considered tiny red solo cups, plastic utensils, and mason jars. And then I thought of a mason jar with a sippy cup top. My friend loved the idea of the mason jar and decided that would make the perfect topper. And inside the jar she would put something to indicate the baby's gender. So I had to leave space on top of the cake, but I still couldn't figure out how to decorate the rest of it.

I was still considering plastic utensils or a doll-sized picnic table when I realized I didn't need to be so literal. After all, the success of my previous diaper cakes were mostly about the fact that they looked like elaborately decorated cakes, not dioramas. So I began thinking about what looks like a picnic without actually laying one out. The ribbon was a good start, but on it's own, it could as easily been a Christmas themed cake as a barbecue/picnic one.

So then my mind wandered to picnics in summer time. In parks and backyards and under a blazing sun. So I decided to use grass, sunflowers, and summer berries. I had made bands of grass out of Styrofoam sheets for a safari themed cake before. But rather than straight edges I went for long spiky blades of grass.

It was bright, bold, and fun. It didn't come out as I first imagined it might, but in the end I found a way to make the cake fit its unusual theme.

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