King Cake Pillow Boxes

Greetings and salutations! Jennifer, here, with a fun way to share the King Cake tradition of Carnival (aka Mardi Gras) even if your friends are far away.

If you're not familiar with the King Cake and its traditions, it's a sweet bread or coffee cake in a ring shape decorated with the colors of Carnival (purple for justice, green for faith, and gold for power) and it usually has a small item--a bean, coin, or plastic baby to represent the Christ child--hidden inside. Whoever gets the piece with the baby is the King or Queen of the party and has the duty to provide the next King Cake!

Carnival starts on January 6 and runs through Mardi Gras (aka Fat Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday which is the beginning of Lent). I created these King Cake pillow boxes as a way to send my friends a virtual slice of cake without sabotaging any of their healthy-living resolutions!

I started out by creating a template for a 4-sided box with curved back and sides and flaps that meet on the "inside" of the ring slice. After cutting several out, I used my scoreboard and bone folder to crease the straight folds and freehanded the curves with the bone folder along the pattern lines, using a soft notebook cover as a cushion.

Once everything was creased along the fold lines, I flipped them over to the right side and used stiff-bristle brushes with gold, terra cotta, and brown ink pads to stiple the box to resemble a golden brown pastry. A lot of King Cakes have a filling rolled in so I used the brown ink to create a cinnamon-sugar swirl along the side pieces.

To mimic the glaze on the King Cake I drizzled white dimensional paint along the top piece of the "cake," allowing some to drip over onto the "outside" to make it a little more realistic. Then I hit the wet paint with green, yellow, and purple glitters for the colored sugar used in the real thing. After ample drying time, I punched matching holes in the flaps to make it easy to open and close the box later on.

Using a thin layer of Helmar Professional Acid Free Glue on the two sets of flaps, I secured the fixed side of the box to the top and bottom pieces, pressing the seams together and wiggling them into place until they line up just perfectly.

Stringing a length of bakers twine between the two holes in front is easier now than when the box is filled.

Inside the boxes, wrapped in tissue paper, are some Mardi Gras beads, a dubloon from a past parade, the ubiquitous plastic baby, some sweets, and a velvet ribbon bookmark with a pretty charm. I kept things small so the sides of the box wouldn't bulge out and ruin the shape.

Tied closed and placed on a platter, I doubt anyone will confuse them for the real King Cake, but they'd make a great party favor if you didn't want to ship them to faraway friends!

Wishing you creative days!