I was cleaning out the cupboard and came across some coffee filters. We don't really need coffee filters these days, not since the Keurig came into our lives (love that machine).
I've seen all sorts of paper flowers made out of coffee filters on various crafty blogs. But lots of them required cutting petals and wiring and some other stuff I wasn't in the mood to bother with. So instead, I just started smooshing.
Guess what? It totally works well enough for my purposes (in that it sort of looks like a flower). So much so that the next thing I know, the older boys are clamoring to make a couple. Love that. And to Charlie who is checking in from work to see what his boys are up to--because his trial is still going and he hasn't seen them in days--yes honey, they are making paper flowers. You should come home now before we move on to making lip gloss.
The how-to, though it's pretty self explanatory:
Find a stack of filters--I used about five for each bloom.
Cut off the bottoms...
Smoosh, smoosh, smoosh...
Place filters inside one another, continuing to smoosh and adjust, until you like how your flower looks. Continue to say smoosh because you like how that word sounds...
I twisted the bottoms and used some floral tape I have on hand. But a twist tie or regular tape would work just as well.
We decided to paint ours with water colors--again, because it's what we had out and we're all about spontaneous crafting around here. We found that the colors go on pretty stark, so after we painted the flowers, I completely drenched them under the faucet, then gently squeezed out the excess water and laid them out to dry. Getting them wet really made the water colors blend nicely. Next time, however, I think I'll let the boys paint the filters while they are flat and then build the flowers with the colored paper--we may like those results more.
After the flowers dried and we fluffed up the petals a bit, the boys were very happy with their creations, as was I considering the ease of the process. These will top some packages we're sending out. I think we'll add some felt leaves and they'll be good to go.
Leo's...
Max's...
and mine...
I have a few foam wreath forms and think they would look lovely with mounds of these affixed. Hmm, I guess we need more coffee filters after all.
