Diaper Basket

Congratulations to my best friend! She had her beautiful baby boy this weekend. He’s a big one too: 8 lbs 10 oz. He’s absolutely perfect! In honor of his birth I thought I’d post the instructions on how to make the diaper basket I made for the baby shower.

Diaper Basket 

I got my supplies.

Lots of diapers

Pretty baby boy ribbon

Lots of rubber bands

Double sided tape

A wire coat hanger

Big pieces of cardboard (I used bottoms to water bottle cases)

Tissue paper

Streamers (or more tissue paper)

Wrapping paper

Misc. items to fill the basket

The first step is to make the base. I wanted the basket to be large and round so I ended up using my Lazy Susan as a template. Ingenious, right? I ended up cutting out more than one circles and putting them on top of each other to make the base stronger. Because I hated the look of the cardboard, I wrapped the pieces in blue wrapping paper. I decided the taped side would go on the inside of the basket so that it wouldn’t show.

Next came the fun part. This is a long monotonous part so don’t give up, you will get there! I opened each diaper and rolled it up tightly. I then put a rubber band around the top to hold it in place. I put the rubber band at the top because I wanted the characters on the diapers to show and wanted to be able to hide the rubber bands with ribbon.

Every three diapers was put together with one more rubber band. Once I had six I put a rubber band around the two ends of the sets of three to hold the diapers all together. It was tedious but looked good in the end. I attached the diapers to the base with double sided tape. On a side note: gluing the diapers to the base and to each other would have been MUCH easier. This is how most diaper cakes and motorcycles, etc. are made. However, I wanted the recipient to be able to use all of the diapers. Diapers are expensive, why waste!?

 I had to play with the diapers a bunch to get them just right before I added the ribbon. This was pretty easy, just add tape to the diapers and tape the ribbon around.

The next part was a little difficult, making the handle. First I cut a wire hanger down to size. I wanted the wire to go into the diapers that formed the base of the basket and be long enough to look natural. Once cut, I formed the wire into a handle and stuck it into one end of the base. I wrapped diapers again and threaded them onto the wire. Because it was lumpy and kind of ugly, I wrapped white streamers around the handle. This made the handle look so much better! You could use tissue paper or something else, but I had streamers on hand so that’s what I used.

Finally it was time to put together the finishing touches. I added the ribbon wrapped around the handle, two bows on the sides of the basket, and tissue paper on the inside. I finished it off with misc. baby items in the basket and hanging toys from the handle.

It turned out well, and the mommy-to-be loved it! I’m sure I would tweak it if I did it again, but I’ll wait until that time comes again!

Until next time,

Jennifer