A Morris-Wood Wedding : DIY Coffee Filter Carnations

Next up in our adventures in  DIY wedding creations, is coffee filter carnations.  I have become totally addicted to making these and love how they look. You could use them for table decor, bouquets, to decorate the back of chairs, so many uses!

First up, gather your weapons. You need acrylic paint, plastic bowls, paintbrushes, a paint tray, bleached white round coffee filters, scissors and a stapler.

You can use any brand of paint or filters, but for this they need to be the round shape. They will start out looking pleated on the sides but that vanishes when you dye the filters. For optimum dyeing, the bleached white filters are a must.

First up, pick your paint, squeeze about a tablespoon's worth into a bowl, add a good amount of water (how much depends on what colour you want) and mix well. You will want to leave the water to settle for about half an hour, the acrylic paint starts out a little separated but it will mix.

You can dye a good amount of the filters together, I dunked about 15 at a time in the mixture, wiggled them a little to ensure they were totally covered, and then squeezed them out. You don't have to be particularly delicated with the coffee filters as they are designed to get wet.

To add extra interest we tipped the edges using an undiluted version of the paint in the paint tray. Make a taco shape with the filters and paint the edges of the filters. The more random and unplanned you are the better! Just make sure there is a good amount of coverage and paint.

You then need leave them to try. You can pop them on a radiator overnight, or you can cheat like we did and use a fan oven. If you use a fan oven do not leave them unattended. It is paper after all! 10 minutes at 160 degrees is all it took to dry them out completely  and then they were ready to use.

Fold the coffee filter in half, then in half again.

You are now going to use the scissors to cut a scalloped edging on the filters. You need two different sizes, and roughly 3 of each to give a good fullness to the carnations.

Unfold them, and put the smaller papers on top of the bigger ones.

Pop your finger directly into the centre of the filters, and pinch the base together.

You need about a centimetre to act as the base of the flower.

Then staple! Staple it better than I have in this really quite terrible tutorial photo.

You then want to flatten it back out again as best you can.

And it's smushing time! Individually scrunch each filter into towards the centre, the scrunchier the better.

One you have scrunched them all in, give one more good scrunch to the whole thing, then separate each layer back out.

You might want to re-tip the flowers depending on how much you cut them.

Because we had very pale bases, I diluted the purple down again to tip the flowers.

And the finished product! You can them experiment with further decoration.

I added glitter paint to this one.

And this one was really experimental, I tipped with both bright pink and silver paint.

Aren't they so pretty? These are actually really quick and easy to make, which is good because I maybe have kind of a lot to make!

You could pop these onto floral wire with floral tape and make them into a bouquet or to be able to put them in a vase.

Do let me know if you make these, I'd love to see your versions!

Much love,

Kitty xxxx

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