Cardboard Cake

Cardboard Cake | Mama Papa Bubba

Oh my goodness, did Miss G ever have fun creating this colourful, sequinned, drippy cardboard cake!  Perfect timing too, as her baby brother’s first birthday is just over a week away and she’s absolutely vibrating with excitement.

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The idea came from the newest addition to our art book collection – Art Workshop for Children by Barbara Rucci.  Barb is the creative behind the hugely popular Art Bar blog and everything she does is just gorgeous.  This book is no exception.  I think I actually gasped audibly when I slid it out of the package.

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The pages are filled with gorgeous, cheery colours and delightful, doable art experiences for kids and when I left the book out for Miss G, she was particularly drawn to this project {as was I!}

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So a couple of days ago, I surprised her after school by setting up this little creative table {along with several cardboard box choices nearby}.

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Miss G was over the moon excited.  Being the fearless little creative that she is, she jumped right in, selected a few boxes, and secured them together using tape from her inventing station.  Because only one of our boxes was brown, she first gave them a coat of tan acrylic paint, and then set to work decorating.

The photos really do speak for themselves…

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First frosting and sprinkles for the bottom tier…

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And then for the middle and top.

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She wanted to be sure her cake had pretty frosting drippings ‘like cakes in pictures do’, so she made sure to use plenty  of paint.

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There really was no waiting for anything to dry.

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Sequins were sprinkled right onto wet paint…

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Generously.  

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Then pompoms were added along the edges.

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Isn’t it beautiful?!

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At the end, she decided that her cake needed exactly eight candles and set to work making them out of colourful straws with yellow tissue paper squares tucked into the openings.

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She was having a hard time securing them to the cake, but after some trial and error, we discovered that sticking long bamboo skewers into the cake and then sliding the candles over top of them worked really well.

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Ta-da!!

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The finished product!  Her plan for once it’s dry?  Birthday pretend play, which sounds pretty perfect to me.

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3 thoughts on “Cardboard Cake

  1. I could not be more in love with this post, Jen!!! I can’t stop looking at these photos, and maybe it’s your beautiful daughter, but I also love that she did this all by herself. I love her choices!! Thank you for being part of my blog tour, it means to the world to me. And thank you for sharing my book with your readers. I hope some day to reciprocate!! xoxo Bar

  2. Drippy cardboard cake! Perfect timing too etechups.com
    as her baby brother’s first birthday is just over a week away and she’s absolutely vibrating with excitement.

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