Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Make Your Own Coffee Filter Flowers

To round out baby shower week (better late than never!), I thought I'd finish up with a quick little tutorial of how I accidentally created this cute little coffee filter and crepe paper flower garlands that I used to decorate Emily's apartment for her baby shower.

I had bought coffee filters for the purpose of creating garlands like these, only to realize that the coffee filters I picked up looked nothing like the ones used in that post. Le sigh. So after a little playing around, I managed to turn a frustrating situation into a new challenge and these little flowers were born.

First, gather your materials. You won't need very many. Just a pack of standard coffee filters for a drip coffee maker, a few sheets of white crepe paper (or tissue paper, if you prefer), scissors, tape, and twine.


The first thing you'll need to do is trim the coffee filters on the seamed edge and bottom.


Next, cut your crepe paper into the same shape as the filters. If you fold the paper accordion-style and cut multiple layers at once, this goes by super quickly. There's no need to be precise in your cutting, the pieces will get trimmed down later anyways, so don't worry about perfection.


Then stack your paper: one coffee filter, then one piece of crepe paper, repeat. I used three sheets of each for a flower, but more layers would give you even fuller flowers.


Now fold the sheets together accordion-style and cut the top edges into a petal shape, either rounded or pointed (I found pointed to be much easier). The layers will be a bit uneven but once they're fluffed out, you won't even notice.


Wrap a piece of tape around the bottom to keep it all together, and you're done! I tied the flowers unfluffed with twine into garlands so that they'd fit easily into my suitcase and then I just fluffed them out the day of the party before hanging them up.


Here's the finished product on Emily's dining room wall.


And the best part is, I can reuse them this week for Thanksgiving decorations! A big plus in my book.

Happy crafting!

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