The Making of a Card Cake

So, as I've mentioned a few times in this blog, I've been working on something called a card cake (or at least I think that's what it's called given that's what it looks like). I got the idea from my friend Melissa E-T's wedding last October. She had one and I just thought it was cool. I also thought I could figure out how to make one too. And so with the help of my friend Kelly, we managed to figure out the basic parts. Here, my friends and loyal readers, is the making of a card cake.

First of all, what is it? Well, essentially, it's a structure made out of hatboxes built to look like a wedding cake. Its purpose is to hold cards that people bring to the wedding and reception. One could have a basket for cards; some people even use a birdcage as a card collector. I thought M.E.T.'s cake was cool and unique though so I wanted one myself. I bought 2 hatboxes during the holiday clearance sales at Hobby Lobby and picked up the third smaller one later with Kelly.

The first thing we had to do was cut the holes in the hatboxes so that the cards could "fall" through the layers (note the knife stuck in the top of the blue box to the right). Then we had to cover the blue boxes with white before we could cover them with fabric as we didn't want the blue showing through the white. After that, we had to carefully measure the white silky fabric so as to glue it on. It took a little while to figure out what glue, etc. to use, but it turned out that the glue gun was the best way to go in the end.

Now, I don't think of myself as much of a creative person when it comes to things like this, so I relied on Kelly to help me get a mental picture of how this thing would actually come together. I can usually do pretty good when I have directions to follow, but I didn't this time and the Internet wasn't that big of a help. Thankully, Kelly is really good at creative person-type things though and before we knew it, we had a plan for putting it together. Unfortuantely, she had to leave early that day, so it was up to me to do some figuring out on my own as well.

I spent the next two weeks or so in between teaching and other things staring at the structure and waiting for inspiration to strike as to how to decorate it. I'm glad I waited and didn't just glue things according to my first instinct because I was able to get some good ideas from Gail who's doing my flowers. In the end, I think it turned out pretty good for my first try and for having no directions. I may tweak it a little with some of the side flowers, but if I don't have time, I'll be happy with it the way it is.

The next project is assembling programs and table decorations, but those'll have to wait until February as it's time to start going to some fun showers! Next weekend I'll be in IL for a shower with some of my old Illinois gang and then the next weekend a shower here in IA with Iowa friends and family. Should be fun. Only 6 weeks to go until wedding time. It's hard to believe it's coming that fast!

See here the finished product.