Coffee Filter Flower Wreath

I'm here to celebrate spring! I love winter but I'm ready for flowers. I decided my apartment door needed a new wreath to welcome spring so I decided to make one out of coffee filter flowers.

You will need:
-For Dying: bucket coffee filters, pie pan, water, food coloring (red), rubber gloves, old towels
-For Making Flowers: scissors, stapler, tape (I used scotch)
-For Making Wreath: wire wreath form, large but sharp needle, floral wire (I used 22 gauge), wire cutters, hot glue gun (optional), ribbon

I made my coffee filter flowers from a combination of two tutorials. When dyeing the coffee filters, I used a tutorial at Homemade Serenity and to turn them into flowers I used a tutorial and video at Two Shades of Pink (although I only used 5 coffee filters and cut them all together).

I hope you'll check out the tutorials above for how to make the flowers. But in case you want to make them just like I did, here's a quick run down of my steps that differed from the original.

I dyed between 10-15 coffee filters at a time. First I did 3 drops of red food coloring, then 6 drops, then 10 drops. I put each set of coffee filters into the pie pan (filled with 1/2 cup water and food coloring) and let them sit for a few minutes. Then I would wring out the coffee filters (while wearing rubber gloves), separate them some to dry, and rinse the pie pan and start over so I would always be dyeing my filter batches with the same amount of food coloring.

Once I had finished, I separated the coffee filters (they had been sticking together) even more and they dried within an hour or so. I was left with this (I had run out of the coffee filters that I had on hand from an old project and bought more, not realizing they were different sizes. I only used the large ones).

I was a bit disappointed with the coloring. I liked the brownish tint in the tutorial pictures. These were very pink and there wasn't too much variety between them. However, I kept going. For each flower, I did two light, two medium, and one dark. I folded them all together in half then quarters and cut a scalloped edge. Then I followed the rest of the tutorial's instructions. I ended up with about twenty of these.

It took me a little while to figure out how to attach them to my wire wreath. I knew I wanted to use floral wire somehow. I tried just tying them around the nub at the bottom of the flower but it didn't work - it just slipped off. So I poked a hole in the bottom of each flower with a thick but sharp needle.

I cut 10-12 inches of floral wire and slipped it through the hole.

Then I wrapped the wire around the nub and glued it just in case (you don't have to do this but I just wanted to be safe!).

Then I wrapped the floral wire around the wire wreath, securing it in its proper place.

Here is how the first one looked. You might have to do some positioning to keep it center so you can't see the wire wreath behind it.

I kept going until I had filled the entire wreath. I used 13 flowers (which translates to 65 coffee filters) and secured it to the door using white ribbon. I thought about cutting the trails off but I kind of like them hanging down.

I'm really happy with how it came out! The colors even work well against my gray front door.

Happy spring!