If you have been tasked with creating an amzing baby shower for a mother-to-be you will love this diaper cake ideas that will save you money over the traditional diaper cake! Additionally, this variation on the traditional diaper cake is more eco-friendly because you are using something most people would throw away!By the way, this post contains Affiliate Links to companies I have partnered with, such as Amazon. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. You can think of affiliate links like tipping your waitress, only it does not cost you anything extra! Thank you for shopping with my links!What is a Diaper Cake?If you are here, my guess is that you are loooking for diaper cake ideas for a baby shower. For those of you that do not know what a diaper cake is, it is a display or centerpiece for a baby shower that is made to look like a giant cake, but the “cake” is made out of diapers. This makes for a fun baby shower decoration, and the new parents can use the diapers after the party is done. So it is a decoration and a gift all in one! For the purpose of my article, when I say “a traditional diaper cake” I am speaking about one that is fully made of diapers from the top to the bottom. I have created traditional diaper cakes in the past, and have broken down the steps into three articles which are linked below:The No Rubber Band Diaper CakeThe traditional diaper cake uses rubber bands to secure the diapers and keep them rolled. One thing I learned after making a few diaper cakes is that if you leave those diapers rolled up and secured with a rubber band for too long, they become crushed and distorted from the rubber band. That is why this time I wanted to find a way to make a no rubber band diaper cake.I knew I needed something that would keep the diapers rolled up, but not cinch them in the middle. I thought about using sports wrap, because it sticks to itself. I was thinking that way it would not stick to the actual diaper. Since we did not have any in the house, I decided to use medical tape since that is less sticky.Money Saving Diaper Cake IdeasThe next thing I started to think about was the overall cost of a diaper cake. If you are making a traditional 4 tier diaper cake with the entire cake made out of rolled diapers, you could end up using 127 diapers. So I ended up looking at the cost of disposable diapers. Since prices can change I want to note that these prices are current as of July 2024.Cost of Disposable DiapersI started to try and think of ways to save money on the expense of the diapers for this project. Yes, you could make a smaller diaper cake and that would save you money. But what if you really wanted to make a large 4 tiered cake. That is when I had an idea! Toilet paper rolls!When you look at the size and shape of a rolled up size 2 diaper and an empty toilet paper roll, they are about the same size. So what would happen if I replaced the majority of the diapers with toilet paper rolls and only used the disposible diapers on the outer edge of the diaper cake. Guess what? It worked!Diaper Cake with Toilet Paper RollsYou might be wondering how many toilet paper rolls you need to make a 4 tier diaper cake. The answer is 65, so as soon as you know you will be making a diaper cake start saving those empty rolls.Did you know that toilet paper rolls are not all the exact same size? I found that out when I started collecting them for this project, so my advice is if you ask your friends and family to help you collect empty rolls, make sure they use the same brand of toilet paper you use. Otherwise it will be a lot harder to make each tier level.First, I want you to go and read my tutorial on a traditional diaper cake, and how to put that together so I don’t have to repeat all of that here. I am going to break down the diaper cake “math” for you below.In the traditional diaper cake the first tier has 7 diapers, so for the diaper cake with toilet paper rolls I used one roll for the center of the tier and 6 diapers going around that. This way I used fewer diapers but from the front when you look at the display all you see are the diapers.For the second tier the traditional diaper cake has 19 diapers. For the diaper cake with toilet paper rolls I used 7 empty toilet paper rolls for the center, which you can see in the image below. I am going to refer to this toilet paper portion of the diaper cake as the core going forward. After I had the core for the second tier put together I only needed 12 actual diapers to go around the outside of those. For the third tier the traditional diaper cake has 38 diapers. Following the same process, you will use 19 toilet paper rolls to make the center core of this tier, which you can see below.Here is where this version of the diaper cake changes. Using the same math we have been using to make the first two tiers, I thought that the third tier would need 19 diapers, but it really only needed 16.Why the difference?I think it is because for this cake I did a no rubber band diaper cake. While the diapers were still rolled, they were not rolled as tight and the centers were not cinched in, so I did not need as many diapers to go around the outer edge. This also helps us with the overall cost of the diaper cake!For the bottom tier on the traditional diaper cake I used 63 diapers. WOW! That is a LOT of diapers! For this layer I used 38 toilet paper rolls, following the same pattern as above. And just like with the last tier I needed fewer actual diapers because these were rolled looser. In the end, I only needed 23 actual diapers for this layer.Diaper Cake With Toilet Paper Rolls TotalsBecause I don’t want to make you go back and add all of that up, here are the totals for my 4 tier diaper cake with toilet paper rolls.65 toilet paper rolls

57 disposable diapersI even made you a image you can save so you can remember those numbers.That is a difference of 70 diapers! That means instead of buying an entire case of diapers, you could just buy two small packages, like these Huggies diapers that have 34 diapers for $11. That means you just cut your overall diaper cost from $50 to $22! Watch It Come Together!Since I thought it would be fun to see this diaper cake with toilet paper rolls come together, I did a 2 part video that you can see on my TikTok, or by checking out the videos below. @shawnmosch Want some money saving tips for throwning a baby shower? Check out my tip on how to use fewer diapers when building a diaper cake! I have more ideas on my website!#diapercake #babyshowerideas #babyshowerdecorations ♬ original sound – Shawn Mosch But that was just part one! Now for the second part! @shawnmosch Money Saving Diaper Cake Idea! Use something most people would throw out! This is the second half to the video I posted earlier! #babyshowerideas #babyshowerdecorations #diapercake ♬ original sound – Shawn Mosch Alternative Diaper Cake IdeasBesides using toilet paper rolls, you could create the entire cake out of other items that can be rolled. This way more of the items used in the baby shower centerpiece are items the new parents can use! Some diaper cake ideas for items to use instead of diapers includeEven MORE Diaper Cake IdeasIf you want even MORE diaper cake ideas, such as ideas for themes and other items to use to decorate them, I will be adding information to my article Easy Diaper Cakes: Adding the Decorations. If you have specific themes you would like me to research or any questions about my diaper cakes feel free to leave those in the comments!