Coffee Filter Flowers

I totally love this craft because it has the three most important elements - easy, cheap, impressive.  You could make about 20+ flowers for $5 or less and they're gorgeous.  Recently I made an "arrangement" of these for my grandmother's birthday using a vase from the dollar store and some snazzy-looking ribbon.  Talk about favourite granddaughter!

To view the tutorial where I originally got the idea, click here.

One modification I made for my flowers was to dye the coffee filters beforehand.  This is really easy (again, do you sense a theme here?) and I did it with water and food colouring.  Just stack some coffee filters on top of each other, fold them up and dip them in the dyed water... they will suck up all the colour they need - those thirsty little buggers. Play around with the intensity of the colour.  I found that they always dried lighter than they looked originally.

If you're impatient like me, you can use your blow dryer to speed dry them so you can get crafting right away.

Here are a few of the ones I made.  After a couple "peonies" or "roses" as I chose to call them, I varied the way that I cut the petals which resulted in different styles of flowers.  You can also cut off more paper on the ends to make smaller or larger ones.

Have fun!

The original peony

I think this one looks more like a rose

I'm calling this one a dahlia or perhaps maybe a water lily... you decide

One of my bouquets