YAP II Cake Decorating

December’s art project in the Chicago Children’s Museum Young Artist Program was cake decorating. Liz developed the “cakes” for this herself (the looms for the weaving project had been constructed by the museum preparators). She started by constructing many round cardboard layers but realized these would not be sturdy enough for any goopy “icing”.

So these “cakes” got a layer of outward facing sticky contact paper and children were invited to decorate them with sequins, jewels, foam shapes, and yarn. And to stack them!

As you can see in the background Liz came up with an idea for “cakes” to frost with an “icing” made of tempera paint and flour. She hot glued upside down plastic bowls to wooden Lazy Susan’s from IKEA and supplied children with bowls of icing and plastic spatulas and decorating tools. For additional decorating, she replaced squeeze bottle tops with metal cake frosting tips.

After people had finished decorating their cakes which could take quite awhile, we scooped the “icing” back into the bowls so the next person could get started. It was really busy in December and this project was really popular and really messy! These pictures were taken at the beginning of the day the tables looked very different by the end of the morning.