Baby Shower Clothesline Cake

Cutting, gluing, painting; theyre all things even a child can do. If you can, too, youll be able to make a baby shower centerpiece cake thats beautiful yet appropriate for a boys or a girls shower. Although the cake isnt edible it can, if you want, hold gifts for the new mom. If thats not the design you want the cake can simply serve as a decoration for the baby shower food or gift table.

Styrofoam disks, or circles, are just what you need to make the extraordinary cake. Choose them in the sizes and thicknesses you want and select as many as you want. The only requirement is that they all be the same size. The cake can be made in many different ways so you have lots of choices to make as you progress with the easy project.

To make the centerpiece cake youll simply stack and glue Styrofoam disks together. If youre using thin Styrofoam circles youll need more disks than if youre using pieces that are thick. In the end, you want the cake to be at least the size of a two-tier round cake you would bake at home. It can, of course, be much larger than that, if you want. One thing that might help you determine how tall to make the cake is the type of gifts you want to hang on the cake - if any. After assembling the cake youll create a clothesline that goes around it. You can hang small gifts from the clothesline if thats the design youre going to make. If not, you can simply hang decorations. To make the cake, stack and glue as many circles as you want. Cut a piece of small-diameter cord thats long enough to wrap once around the cake. Set this piece aside for the moment. Coat the entire cake with white dimension paint. This type of paint is thick and allows you to make small peaks all over it or smooth it out like the icing on a real cake. As the paint dries set about creating the clothesline that goes around the cake. Lay the cord piece out on a table and use miniature clothes pins to hang the gifts. Clip a miniature clothespin onto the clothesline, move down the line a couple of inches, and clip on another one. Do this until the line is covered with clothes pins which are evenly spaced. If youll be making a cake with no gifts the clothes pins arent necessary. Instead, glue tiny pieces of yarn or cord on to represent clothes pins. With the clothespin version you can clip on letters that spell out "BABY", staggered with small presents like gift cards or booties, then glue the finished clothesline around the cake. If youre not attaching gifts glue letters to spell "BABY", alternated with pictures cut from scrapbook paper. The pictures can be of booties, rattles, baby clothing and similar things. You can top the cake with any number of embellishments. Fake cherries or strawberries, pink or blue ribbons, fake candies and similar things look great. In fact, if you butt small pom-poms together, all the way around the bottom and top of the cake, it can look like heaps of frosting outlining the "dessert". When youre finished creating the cake youll be astounded at your own talent even though it took little effort to create. Its gorgeous!