Wedding Cake Mini Album ~ Robin's Nest DT Project

This is a project I made for a friend's wedding pictures.  It was a birthday gift to her so I've been holding on to it until I could give it to her.  But now that I have I can share it with you!  I have to give credit for the outside cake portion to sacrafters on youtube.  She has a great tutorial on how she made her version of a wedding cake for a mini album as well as a ton of other great tutorials.  Be sure to check her out. 

I tweaked her design just a bit to make it my way and I absolutely loooove the way it came out!  Here is one picture of the inside before I tell you how I made it.

Isn't it cute?!  I know right?  Okay, so my only problem was that I got so excited after I started making it, I forgot to keep taking pictures!  I had a lot of fun with this, really.

 

 

So the first thing I did was choose my papers and cut them in three sizes (picture above).  I chose Glitter Black and White Swirl, and Glitter White on White cardstocks.  These are the same papers I used ink on in an earlier project and made it look totally old world.  This paper is so versatile, but for wedding for formal events, you don't have to do a thing to them and they are still fabulous!  I can even see them paired with red for great Christmas projects or with orange for Halloween.  Again, the possibilities are endless.

 

 The circle sizes are 4, 5.5 and 6 inches, but you could really do any size you need to accommodate your mini.  I then cut coordinating papers in strips 1.5, 2 and 3 inches in depth (I had to cut two lengths of each strip to make it long enough to go all the way around.

 

Then, cut three pieces of cardboard (picture below) to fit your circles (I used a shipping box for good thick card board) You will need a second circle like the bigger one later so you might want to cut that one out now too.  Cover the top side of your circles and the bottom side of your largest circle.  I painted the edges first, but it turned out that between the side pieces and the trim you wouldn't see any raw cardboard anyway, it was a needless step.  Once you have your circles covered, stack them on top of each other (centered) and pierce a small hole all the way through the stack of 3.

 

Next (picture below) I used my hot glue gun and added the strips to each circle to make a "layer" for my cake.  And this . . . is where I stopped taking photos.  The cake started coming together so quickly that I just got carried away in the fun of it all.  So below this picture I will give the rest of my instructions and you picture it in your head . .. okay?

Once you have each layer completed, you will need some heavy gauge wire or some coated wire that's pretty heavy duty (a long enough piece to double and go from the top of the cake to the bottom).  With the wire doubled, start threading your layers on, starting with the largest layer on the bottom.  When you get the top one on you want to leave a loop (where it's folded in half) sticking out the top (about 1/4" sticking out).  Under the bottom layer, twist the wire and then spread it out so it "catches."  You should now be able to pick up your cake by the top loop.  To hide the wire I put a homemade flower in the bottom layer and of course the top I covered with flowers and a couple of stick pins.  I then added a bit of black ribbon tied to the "loop" of wire.  This give you a handle to open and close the box rather than picking it up by one of the layers.  If you take a look at the next picture, you can see the inside of the box.  Now is when you need that extra circle you cut from the cardboard.  Start by trimming about 1/16th of an inch all the way around the circle.  Then cover it in white cardstock.  You will basically create another cake layer in all white, except that it will be upside down.  Because you trimmed that 1/16th of an inch off it will fit nicely inside the "lid."  Be sure you don't trim it down too much or your lid will not fit snugly.  I also added a bit of lace hanging off so that if the bottom gets stuck inside the lid you have a way to pull it out without destroying your cake.  After that I decorated my cake!

 

Next you will see pictures of the mini album I fit inside.  Be careful.  My album got a little too fat and my lid wouldn't go all the way to the bottom of my box so I had to add a bit of lace at the bottom to hide that fact.  So, before you start creating, decide if you can keep your mini . . . well mini; or if you want to make your layers taller.

 

For the album I used the same papers (Glitter Black and White Swirl, and Glitter White on White cardstocks plus Glitter Silver on Black cardstock along with white cardstock.  Each of the six pages of the album are pockets with a tag in each so there is room for plenty of wedding photos.  Below you can check out the pictures of the top and of all of the pages of the album. 

 

Thank you so much for taking a look at my project.  I can't say enough about this glitter paper, especially for wedding projects.  Be sure to check out the Robin's Nest website for these and other fabulous papers!

 

 

 

~ Make Today Count

Wendy