Cupcake and Cake Decorating Idea: Paper Bunting Flags

Making a paper bunting is a very sweet and simple way to decorate your cupcakes, or you can make a larger bunting and decorate an entire cake. My twin boys recently turned 3, (oh it just goes too quickly!) and I wanted to make them cupcakes for their amusement park birthday party. I looked into many ideas that involved decorating with icing, but truth be told, I am just not very skilled with icing at all! So instead I decided to make "fair themed" cupcakes and I was really happy with the way they turned out. It is a little bit time consuming, but for me it was much easier. For one I was able to just do it on the couch in the evening before their party while watching a little Project Runway, rather than labor in my kitchen on a hot summer evening with 14 different colors of icing. Another thing I like about this idea is you can make a pretty healthy cupcake, white frosting (no dyes) and it's still just as fun and festive as cupcakes with m&m's, red hots and gum drops. I even made a couple for my mom, who is diabetic, without any frosting at all, and it still looked really cute.

What you need is:

Scissors
Paper (in a couple colors/textures - I used velum, in red and transparent white and an off-white paper)
String
Sticks or long toothpicks (I used skewers and just broke them into three pieces)

What you do:

First I cut all my pieces of paper into little flags. I cut enough to have 5 flags for each cupcake, so just times the number of cupcakes you are making by 5. Then I cut my string to about 7 inches, that way it will have a little slack in the middle and enough extra string to tie the ends. If you need more room to tie you can always cut your strings longer and then trim them. Then as you can see from the photo on the left, I simply sewed the flags on using an embroidery needle. After you have all your flags strung on your string, tie them to the ends of your sticks, which I had cut to about 4 inches long. Stick them into your cupcakes and tada, you are done!

Happy Birthday!

Le Cupcake

For my boys individual cupcakes I added a balloon for a "hot air balloon" look. I added a bunting across the balloon and then stuck the string down the middle of the cupcake, using one of my skewer sticks. I was going to add a little figure of my twins in the cupcake (as the hot air balloon basket) but, um, I never got that far...But it was a good idea!