I came across several packages of unused coffee filters at work. About 6 months prior I had thrown out about 8 packages so I knew that we weren’t going to use these either. I decided to look up on Pinterest things that I could do with coffee filters.
As luck would have it there was a baby shower coming up at work and I stumbled upon a really cute garland made out of coffee filters, so BAM! The decision was made. I was going to try it.
Here’s what you need:
Coffee filters (you can get them super cheap at the dollar store or save them from being tossed at work like I did)
Food coloring
A pot of cold tap water
Glue gun
Here’s what you do:
Now I had read the instructions on several projects but when it came time to do it I decided to just wing it. Well not totally wing it. But I wasn’t following step by step either.
I gathered the coffee filters, some red food coloring (my project was going to be pink for the baby shower), and a pot with cold water.
I put some red food coloring, about 3-5 drops in the pot of cold water. The amount of coloring you are adding depends on the coloring you are going for. I was trying for a pinkish color.
I then added all the coffee filters and let them soak for about 30 seconds. I then wrung them out. You can wring them out pretty good as they are not too flimsy. You will want to get as much water out of them as possible to help with the next step.
I then tried to just air dry them by leaving them spread out on the counter. They were taking ::forever:: so I put them in the dryer. Now I checked on them every 30 seconds or so until they were dry because I didn’t want anything catching on fire or something equally hazardous. They dried really quickly that way.
{I totally need to make sure the lighting is better for my pics!}
Next I took them individually and folded them in half then brought up the other two sides to make the beginning of a flower shape.
After folding I stapled them at the bottom to hold them together.
I then got out my glue gun and started to glue them into a white coffee filter.
The original plan was to make a bunch of little flower balls but things didn’t go quite as planned.
The flower didn’t look full enough to me. Hmmm….not sure really what to do as the original plan also included gluing the two of the above flowers together but like I said, it was not looking as full as I was wanting it to.
They look fine in the pic above (except for the lighting issues) as they look fluffy and like they would hold up But when I tried to attach it to the ribbon I was going to hang it with they just looked kind of floppy. And floppy was not the look I was going for.
After some deliberation and multiple attempts at forcing them to look like some of the pics on the internet, I ended up just making a big flower ball and this is the finished product!
So while in my mind it was going to be several much smaller flower balls I’m still pretty happy with how it turned out.
Here is a pic of how it looked in the break room at work. Notice how we took it old school with the decorations by adding the paper chain!
- What cool things have you created lately?
- Have you ever taken something and re-used it in a different way?
(((hugs))) ~lisa
Our Gray House 