This costume is one of the most fun costumes I've made. It was a bit time consuming, but everyone loved it!

Here's what you'll need:

You'll need a stretchy fleece fabric for the cupcake icing. I used white, but you could use another color.

craft foam in brown (for cherry stem) and in pink (for sprinkles)

a big bag of cotton batting,

sewing machine

red poster board (or another color),

hot glue,

2 hoola-hoops (one slightly smaller than the other to fit inside the larger one)

small metal eyelets in the same color as the poster board

small pink foam hair rollers (for sprinkles)

white vinyl strapping (to hold it up)

safety pins and velcro

white pull over shirt

Step 1: Making the Icing and Sprinkles

I'm sorry that I didn't take a lot of pictures, but I wasn't intending to do a tutorial when I made it. I'm hoping the photos will help to show how it worked.

For the icing, I sewed long tubes with the fleece fabric and stuffed with cotton batting. Make two tubes long enough that you can make a circle out of it (that looks like a doughnut) . These tubes are about the same length, but the bottom one is just slightly larger. Once they are stuffed, you have to hand sew the ends to each other to keep the circle together.

The top tube, is really not a tube. I did it in two parts so I could rest my arms through the separation. None of the tubes are attached to each other. They're heavy enough to just sit on top of each other. I did attach velcro to the top tube parts that help hold it to the middle tube. I just used the loop part of the velcro and it stuck pretty good to the fleece fabric without needing the other part of the velcro. I think I also used safety pins on it to hold it on the ends near to my arms.

The sprinkles are foam hair rollers and pieces of craft foam cut into circles and rectangles. I just randomly hot glued them on just like they would look if you sprinkled them on a real cupcake.

Step 2: Making the Cup of the Cupcake

The cup part was made out of red poster board. It took two big poster boards to fit around the hoola-hoop. I just did a fan-fold of the poster board and glued/stapled the two pieces together. At the top of the cup, I punched little holes all around the top and added little metal eyelets to keep the holes from ripping. (I used red eyelets to match the color of the cup.) I happen to own a puncher thing that attaches eyelets, but if you don't have one, you could probably put heavy tape on the top of the cupcake cup before punching the holes and the holes will probably not tear. If you're using red poster board, you could also use red duct tape to match.

Then I tied the cup to the larger of the two hoola-hoops. (The smaller hoola-hoop nests inside the larger one, but I'll get to that in a minute.) It was hard to work on the cup because it really had to be suspended to keep it from bending and to hold it up while you tie the cup to the hoola-hoop. I used small little clamps to hold the cup to the hoola-hoop until I got enough of it tied on that it stayed up without the clamps. I made this costume originally in 2013 and my husband assisted a lot with holding it. This year, I propped it between two chairs that I had put up on TV trays (to get it high enough off the floor) on a mop handle and that actually worked better. The cup will naturally 'collapse' smaller at the bottom making it look more like a real cupcake, but I suppose you could put some sort of smaller ring at the bottom if you wanted. It will be a lot more work to do that, but I suppose it would work.

Step 3: Attaching It All Together

I made white straps to attach to the smaller hoola-hoop that go over my shoulders to hold it all up. The smaller ring, then gets bolted to the larger ring. We predrilled holes through both the outer ring and the inner ring.

To get into the costume, you have to get help putting the cup over your head. Then you hold onto the cup while a willing participant bolts that ring to the inner ring with the shoulder straps. Then they have to slide each of the two white icing tubes over your head and they will rest on top of the hoola-hoops.

I don't have a photo with the straps, but you can kind of see it in this photo. (Yes, everyone will want to take a bite of you. It happened ALL NIGHT LONG.)

Step 4: The Cherry on Top

The cherry hat. You could really leave this out, but I thought it added to the costume. I found sparkly red felt to use for the cherry part. I made a half ball shape using a beach ball as a pattern. The stem part is made from brown craft foam. It is 3 different pieces. Two pieces are the sides (and they are exactly the same shape/size). The 3rd piece is the flat part on the stem. There is a stick in the middle to keep it all standing up. Then I sewed a little piece of elastic to hold it onto my head. Wearing a short red bob wig was the final part of the costume.

Step 5: Give Yourself Plenty of Time...

This costume took me a couple of weeks to get all done. I think a lot of my time was also spent just trying to figure out the logistics of making it look like a cupcake and at the same time figuring out how I was going to get into and out of that thing. We waited until we got to the bar/party to put it on. Needless to say, you cannot sit down in this costume! Take that into consideration before deciding to do this costume. I have won two Best Costume prizes with this costume and would likely have won another one, but just couldn't make it to the next bar in time.