DIY CENTERPIECE BURLAP CAKE

Welcome to Wedding Wednesday !   If you're like a lot of people now days, you're working on a limited budget.  That's our situation, but it doesn't mean that our parties, receptions or dinners have to look cheap or go without any decor.  DIY projects are just the solution to stay within the budget, and that's exactly what I did for the Rehearsal Dinner we hosted for our son and daughter-in-law back in June.  If you missed the post with all the details, you can see it at my last post DIY Rehearsal Dinner On a Budget  (part 1).

Today, I'll be sharing a tutorial for the faux cake I made for the centerpiece on the dessert table.

 As I began the planning for the dinner, I did a little browsing on line and found that Chris from Celebrating @ Home had created a beautiful centerpiece cake.  I used her idea for my inspiration to create my own cake.

I wanted my cake to be monochromatic with layers and texture.  Below is the list of supplies I used to make my cake:

~ two small round tiered boxes 

~ ribbon, lace, beads, buttons, and faux flowers

~ muslin and burlap fabric

~ glue gun

~ thread

You can imagine how excited I was while garage saleing with a friend when I found the exact boxes I needed for this projects at 25 cents each !!!  Garage sales are great places to find items at greatly reduced prices.

I began the project by collecting supplies I already had around the house left over from other projects.

For the cake, you'll not be using the lids of the boxes, so remove them and save for another project.

I then measured the circumference and height of the two boxes.  I then added the radius (the distance from the edge to the center of the box) to the height of each box.   This gave me the measurement for the amount of fabric I would need to cover the boxes.

After cutting the fabric to the correct height, I wrapped it around the boxes using the excess width of the material to cover the top of the cake.  Once in place, I used my glue gun to glue the fabric to the box.

I then made pleats in the top fabric, adhering each pleat with glue after forming the pleat.

I repeated this process on the second box as well.  I then took the hot glue gun, and glued the smaller box on the top of the larger box, making sure to center it.

It was now time to move on to the fun part ~ decorating the cake!

Using wide flat lace, I wrapped both the top and bottom layers of the cake.  I then added a piece of burlap centered on top of the lace on the bottom layer, and a string of beads at the base of the top layer.  I made several of the flowers for the cake too.  Instructions correspond to the numbers on the picture below.

# 1 and # 2 ~ Taking a small strip of muslin, I simply gathered the edge by running a large gathering stitch.  I then sewed the ends together, and formed the flower.  For the center of the flower, I used three clear bead buttons sewing them together with a running stitch and then gluing them to the center of the flower.

# 3. The third flower I made after seeing some lovely flowers that Rita from Harbour Breeze Home made.  She used the tutorial from  Just Another Hang Up which provides an excellent set of instructions.  I followed her instructions to make both the burlap flower and my # 4 ribbon flower.

# 5. I added some faux scrapbook flowers as fillers, a few buttons and a purple rhinestone for embellishment since purple was one of the main colors for our son and daughter-in-law's wedding.  At the very top of the cake, I glued on a few faux hydrangea flowers.

When the cake was complete, it needed a pretty cake stand.  I made this too using a small plate placed on top of a candle holder.  Makes for a very simple cake stand, wouldn't you say!  I didn't even glue them together because I used a salad plate from my dinnerware, but, of course, if you have concerns about it tipping, you can glue the two together.

For my cake, I wanted a tone on tone effect, but if you would like, you can add any color combination you like to fit your decor.   This faux cake made for a lovely centerpiece on the dessert table at the Rehearsal Dinner, but the great thing about it being faux is that I could take it home, and use it again!  I think it would look beautiful for a shower or anniversary party as well.