Dressed Up Cupcakes

If you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you probably know that two things I love to do are bake and craft.  Today, I combined them. 

Perhaps you've seen the ridiculously expensive cupcake wrappers for sale all over the Internet or in a specialty store.  If you're not sure what I'm talking about, click here to see some examples. 

Now, some of those are laser cut and might be a bit fancier than mine, but at $13 for a dozen, I need them to be more than just pretty - they need to be able to get up and make the cupcakes themselves!

On the other hand, from a 12 X 12 sheet of scrapbook paper that cost me $ .59, I was able to get six of these pretty little wrappers...

Obviously I used several different sheets of paper for these.

For this one, I even went a little crazy and used some fancy blade scissors!

And, because Bryant loves graph paper...

I used the template here, but found it was a bit too tall for my cupcakes (you might notice that some of them look like they're sinking down into the wrapper).  After I made a few of them, I trimmed the template down by about 1/4 inch and they fit much more nicely.  However, I think that's very much a matter of personal taste and may need to be adjusted if the cupcakes are particularly tall. 

I think some cute shaped punches would add a nice touch, particularly if they were for a special occasion.  For a lazy Friday though, all the fancy we needed was sprinkles, artfully applied by my decorating crew - Pookie, Midge and Scooter!