Creata-A-Cupcake

Some of my kids' favorite toys that they haven't outgrown are wooden pretend food with velcro attachments by Melissa and Doug. These toys are cool because you can pretend to slice the food items and stack them up to create food to order. They have the bread set, some vegetables and their ultimate favorite is a birthday cake set. They love to pretend that it's someone's birthday and make a cake for the "celebrant".

Nadya saw these cupcake stamps from Unity Stamp Co. hen they arrived and immediately wanted to make her own cupcakes. This I thought was cool because although I do have a cake-decorating sideline, cleaning up after the kids make their own cupcakes is not always fun. So what's the next best thing to decorating real cupcakes? Try out my "Create-A-Cupcake" play set and find out!

• First, I stamped, colored, and cut-out the different pieces -- cupcakes, icing, candles, flowers, cherries.
• Then I laminated each piece (having my own laminating machine is very handy).
• Lastly, I attached a small piece of Cling-On Mounting foam (the kind you use for unmounted stamps) behind each piece.

And that's it! By using the cling foam, they can make as many variations as there are pieces -- and since I have the stamps, we can always add more pieces to the set.

I also altered a tin lunchbox that used to hold chipboard die-cuts (K & Co.) to keep all the pieces in. Now my kids can create as many cupcakes as they want, without mom having to clean up after them...or even worse, having to eat all the cupcakes!