How to Make the Perfect Tricycle Diaper Cake for the Next Baby Shower You Attend

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If you’re wondering whether or not you should make a tricycle diaper cake for the next baby shower you attend, here’s all the confirmation you need. Tricycle diaper cakes are perfect for subsequent baby showers, and incredibly simple to make!

Aside from how creative and cute they look, they’re also practical. Typically, if you’re having “another boy” or “another girl”, you already have most of the clothes on hand that you’ll need for the babe. What you’re more likely to want is diapers and wipes.

Additionally, tricycle diaper cakes allow you to gift small items that you know mom is going to use. You want to know how many times I’ve boughten sippy cups for my child in his lifetime? I’m pretty sure, also, that I buy a new pack of receiving blankets weeks before each of my boys has been born. Everything that comes with the diaper tricycle has a purpose (minus the ribbon and rubber bands). I love how pragmatic this is.

Before You Begin,

This was my second attempt at making a diaper tricycle, and I’m so pleased with the results. I made this for my friend’s baby shower. Overall, I think it took me about an hour to put it all together. It really isn’t hard, once you know what you’re doing.

I started by placing an order at Walmart pickup. Unfortunately, I’m a last minute kind of person (it’s my toxic trait). The Walmart selection of cute baby items is just not as cute as it should be IMO. Personal rant, I guess. Anyways, if I could do it over again, I would have opted for more unique or fun items on Amazon, Etsy, Carters, or a children’s boutique of sorts to get personalized pieces (think monogrammed bibs/blankets).

Alas, I was at the mercy of Walmart, so I had to make do. On a positive note, I ordered everything through their app for pickup, which definitely made the shopping for items effortless and quick! I ordered:

• one large box of diapers
• two bibs (came in a pack of four)
• two receiving blankets (came in a pack of four)
• baby mittens (came in a pack of five)
• blue ribbon
• white ribbon (it’s a boy design)
• blue sippy cup (I opted for a Tommy Tippee)
• plush toy

A Few Tips:

As a general rule, I like to gift size two diapers when bringing them to a baby shower. They’re not too large that they make the wheels work. I like the larger size, because typically most people bring size one diapers. I like to make sure the new mom/dad have size twos on hand at home whenever baby grows.

For this diaper tricycle, I purposely picked the bib packed based on the “look out world, here I come” bib that was offered at Walmart. The baby shower theme was airplanes and travel theme, and I felt like that bib encapsuled that theme as well.

I will say, for the receiving blankets, you can get a tiny bit more creative. You for sure need one receiving blanket for the handle bars, simply because the receiving blankets are stiff and hold their shape well. However, with the first tricycle cake I made, I used a personalized baby blanket for the “axle” that holds all three wheels together. Having a softer blanket for that piece works well, because you don’t necessarily need this blanket to hold its shape as tightly.

Lastly, I’ve also used baby onesies instead of a second bib for the “seat” of the tricycle. Onesies are much cuter for a shower gift and add a more unique flare to the gift.

Additional Tools You Need to Assemble

Some sort of adhesive is going to help you keep everything into place (think the ribbons). My go-to is a hot glue gun. Be sure to keep the glue between layers of ribbon, rather than gluing the ribbon directly onto a diaper. This helps you avoid ruining one or two diapers in the process.

You’re going to need rubber bands to keep the wheels together. A regular sized rubber band is stretchy enough to wrap around an 8 inch wheel. You don’t need the extra large sizes (like I thought I did with my first attempt).

Lastly, the best way to make the wheels out of diapers is by using a round 8″ cake pan.

My Favorite Small Detail

Before I started making the actual tricycle, I added one small, simple detail that is probably my favorite part. Because I’m already taking the diapers out of the package to use for the wheels, I took a permanent marker and added diaper messages to the diapers.

I didn’t do this to all of the diapers; but I think it’s super fun to write silly messages on some of the diapers. These messages were funny sayings like “It was your turn, huh?”. If you want more inspiration, check out this blog post that contains a list of diaper messages that you can write, or inspire you to write your own.

Making the Tricycle Diaper Cake

The hardest part of assembling the tricycle is the wheels. I started by grabbing a handful of diapers and separating them. I wanted to leave about 1/2 inch of layover between each diaper so it kind of appeared to have a fan shape. Then you slowly turn them along the edge of the cake pan. Continue to add more diapers to the cake pan until they are all firmly placed together inside the pan. It should look something like this:

Once you have them the way you want, secure the diapers with rubber band, and make two more wheels, for a total of three wheels.

You don’t have to do this next step, but it does make it look cuter. I attached some ribbon with a glue gun, being sure to glue the ribbon to the ribbon, not the ribbon to the diapers (if that makes sense). This keeps you from ruining one or two diapers with hot glue in the process.

One mistake I made with this tricycle diaper cake was not checking the ribbon width before ordering both ribbons. Because they were the same size width, I ended up having to use two blue ribbons side by side with the white ribbon laying in the center. Next time, I’ll do better at paying attention to the ribbon width. So, if you’re wanting to use two different ribbons for a more fun design, make sure you’re looking out for that.

On to the Receiving Blankets

If you refer to the upper photo, you can see the receiving blanket being weaved through the center of each of the three wheels. After I was done gluing the ribbon on all three wheels, I moved onto the receiving blankets. What I did was fold the blanket in half and then roll it up as tightly as I could manage.

Someone suggested ironing it before you do this to give it some extra stiffness. You can if you want, but I found mine to hold well the entire duration. Next, I just pulled it through each diaper wheel to form the axle.

Lastly, I glued the wheels with the “axle” in them onto the diaper box to keep them more stable. This ensures that they don’t fall over/wobble. I made this the day before the shower and knew I had to transport it from my house to the event.

With three boys in a minivan for 15 minutes, there’s all sorts of things that could happen to it. Therefore, I gave myself some extra comfort by using more glue. Again, be sure to glue the ribbon to the board, not the diapers to keep from wasting more diapers.

For the Rest of the Tricycle Diaper Cake:

The second receiving blanket that you roll up is used as the handle bars. Weave it through only the first wheel, and then I laid it down for a minute. I gathered the two bibs and intertwined them together; one now becomes the front of the tricycle while the back one is the “seat”, like so:

After both bibs are laid out how you want them, place the sippy cup on the gap opening of the bib and secure the “handle bars” of the receiving blanket around the sippy cup with a rubber band. It should look like this:

The final fun details make the tricycle diaper cake complete! I spread out the handle bars and attached blue mittens to the ends. Obviously, the front looks a little silly with just a rubber band securing the front. You can spruce it up by using the last of the ribbon you have. Alternatively, if you aren’t confident in your bow making skills, a blue or pink gift bow secured with rubber band or string will work just as well.

Finally, I added my plush toy to the seat of the tricycle diaper cake to make it seem like our tricycle has a capable driver.

The Final Results

I am so happy with how it turned out, and how little time it took! I probably spent an hour, maximum, on the whole thing! The amount of compliments I received at the shower proved that everyone else thought it was fantastic as well.

A Shoutout Before I Go

One final statement: this blog post would not be complete without sharing a bit about the book that made the appearance at the shower with the tricycle diaper cake. I am so honored to be married to such a talented man who continues to challenge the norm in the realm of what’s possible for a guy to accomplish.

Recently, he published his first children’s book, Crop Duster Pete, all about a day in the life of a Crop Duster Pilot. It seems so fitting to be able to give away a children’s book at a baby shower as well, and this book is such a nice addition to the airplane travel shower theme. You can snag your copy here on Amazon. It’s also available at Walmart, Barnes and Noble and ThriftBooks.

I sure hope the instructions here were clear enough to follow! Additionally, I hope you realize how simple, easy, practical and adorable this really was. Please let me know in the comments if you have any questions!