Cupcake Obsession (and a little party planning bug)

I have been bitten by the cupcake bug! More specifically the cupcake decorating bug. It all started with Dad's birthday cupcake tower and got a little sidelined in all the Christmas craziness, but now that it's a new year, it's back in full force!

I have at least one baby shower to help make a cupcake tower for (and another I may be helping with that may or may not be Hello Kitty themed...not sure yet), and the first item on the list of things to make is definitely a bunch of these cupcake wrappers, either on my Wishblade or Mom's new Cricut Expression. Luckily, I found a great stash of American Crafts paper on closeout at Tuesday Morning- it'll be perfect!

And of course the cupcakes need cute little toppers. I made the ones for Dad's party using a dingbat font I found on another blog, but now I'm eying these Hello Kitty cutting files.

This one is from GSD Junkie.

And this one is from The Quilling Patch. Both are free!

The cupcakes will need sprinkles, as well, and Jessica over on Such Pretty Things posted a great tutorial on coloring your own.

She also has this amazing cabinet full of all kinds of wonderful sprinkles and decorative candies. I want!!

And, while it's not cupcake related, she also can do this to sugar cubes. Color me jealous!

Once the cupcakes have been made and decorated, they need to be presented properly. I have dreams of being able to put together something as coordinated as this party setup by TomKat studio.

I'd want, of course, an assortment of pretty serving platters. The ones below were DIY platters found on Design*Sponge. I'd seen them made before, but it seemed that the week I thought of them, everyone posted them on their blogs!

Even IKEA Hacker had one that week. These are super easy to make- all you need is a pretty plate, an inexpensive glass candlestick holder, and some epoxy (I like to use E6000).

The cake stand below is from Mia Rosa (via Visual Notes) and is a little more sophisticated. I think I could make one of these, too, as long as I can drill through the plates without shattering them.

And how about decorations above the table? I'm partial to tissue paper pom-poms (if you can't tell by the bunch I put over my desk in my scrap room) like these from Martha Stewart.

And maybe a pretty stitched banner to go along with them?

Yeah, I dare you to do a search for "garland" on Flickr and not get sucked in by the pretties!! :)