Ecolovies ~ Cupcake Pedestals

If you want to make handmade gifts for this season, September is the time to start planning for Christmas. I am a thrifter when it comes to gift giving and so I have been looking for ideas. While searching online, I found this gem of a site:

Zakka Life

This post was especially appealing because of the tiny cupcake stands! They were SO cute that I instantly added it to my trial Christmas gift list (because you have to try it out before you plan on making tons of them for friends and family, right?). I ended up making 3 cupcake pedestals and 2 mini cake stands for a total of $9 from my local thrift shops and let me tell you, it was SO much fun to find all of these sweet little dishes to put together!

Ok, first, gather your materials. On Zakka, she used a tiny tea set plate for the top of her pedestal... but I have all crystal serving dishes, so I went with tiny crystal (or at least clear glass) plates so they matched my "special" dishes. (You want them to be 4 inches across or less). Then, I added to that some little candle holders that seemed to fit the style of the plates. You have to see where the best fit is, on top of the candle holder or the bottom. The pedestals have to be stable, so play around with your plates and holders to get the best fit.

A note on gluing with glass: I have always been afraid of epoxy glue. For me, it seemed like something really dangerous. When I was telling The Man about this project, he suggested using epoxy and it took me two weeks to get to doing it because I was nervous! How silly is that?! Especially considering it was SO easy! Like crazy easy... and to think, I hadn't used this stuff before. Now I have tons of glass and epoxy projects in my mental queue.

I used course grit sand paper to 'rough up' the parts that I wanted glued together. Then I used a nail to mix and carefully apply the epoxy. I placed the pieces together and let them sit overnight, and when I woke up, this was what I had:

All glued perfectly. My idea for a gift is two of these, with a cupcake mix in a jar. Or perhaps a tiny spring form pan and one of the larger pedestals? Perhaps in a little bag with some tissue and raffia? I don't know, but I think they would make amazing gifts!

The cake stand (in the back in this picture) is about 6 inches wide. It works perfectly with Cyan's tiny spring form cake pan from her baking set. I see many a tea party in my future.

This afternoon I made a batch of Chocolate Beet Cupcakes and they were so perfect and moist! (Recipe at the bottom of this post.)

I decided to make a evening of it and treat my kids to the new cupcake stands along with some chai tea and beet cupcakes. Then it started raining... so we had to come back inside, but they loved them: