DIY Craft: Halloween Coffee Filter Flowers.

Autumn is the perfect season for arts and crafts. Everywhere you look outside during this season is inspiring, colorful, and beautiful. Why not have the inside be just as fabulous?

Completing a pinned craft was an easy choice for my second project for the Pin It Do It Challenge. Selecting which pin to create? Let’s just say it took several days to decide. Based off of a strict financial budget, I chose to make coffee filter flowers. My pin for coffee filter flowers came from Evie at Brown Paper Packages. Evie’s tutorial has great step-by-step photos to make simple, white peonies out of coffee filters.

For the challenge, I wanted to step it up a bit. Instead of plain white flowers, I decided to alter this pin and create gorgeous colored flowers that are perfectly suited for Halloween or any time during the fall. Also, my Halloween coffee filter flowers require no glue, no stapling… nada. Just electrical tape, the tool of the Gods.

What You Need:
– 4-5 coffee filters (per flower you want to create)
– Food coloring
– Electrical tape
– 1 food skewer (per flower you want to create)
– 2 paper towels (per flower you want to create)
– Scissors

The night before (or morning of) this craft, you’ll want to color your filters. I made an array of yellow’s and orange’s to fit the Halloween theme. Simply put water and some food coloring in a bowl, dip each filter in the coloring, and squeeze out the excess water. Dry flat on wax paper or something to catch the dye. Ooh, look at zee colors!

Take 4 – 5 coffee filters and stack them. Quarter-fold the filters (for any mathematically challenged readers like me, simply fold in half, then fold again). Cut a scallop line down the outside of the filters. It doesn’t have to be perfect, this just helps give the flowers some shape.

Take your first filter and poke the skewer through the middle. You’ll want to keep a fingertip on the top of the skewer during all the twisting you’ll see below. Trust me on this one, it’s easy to have the entire flower pop off the top if you’re not careful. Ahh, the joys of working without glue!

Once you’ve skewered the filter, pull the sides upwards and begin twisting. Your coffee filter will soon take the shape of the center of a peony. Once you’ve twisted the filter into a flower-esque shape, wrap a little electrical tape at the base, touching the flower and the skewer.

Continue this step with the other 3-4 filters. After your first filter (the yellow one, pictured above), you will load your filters from the bottom of the skewer. Simply poke the bottom of the skewer through the center of the filter, and pull the filter up to meet the previous layer. Twist, twist, twist, tape, tape, tape.

This is what your almost-complete flower should look like! You can experiment with twisting more for a tighter flower. I did a moderate-level of twisting so my flowers would still be big and beautiful.

Once your flower part is complete, it’s time to plump up the stem! Make Arnold Schwarzenegger proud, dolls. Take two paper towels and lay them on top of each other. You can fold the paper towel if it is longer than the skewer. Begin wrapping the paper towel around the skewer.

Once your skewer is completely wrapped in paper towel, grab your electrical tape and begin wrapping once again. The orange and black combined make these the perfect Halloween and autumn decoration. Who says flowers don’t have black stems? They do now!

The finished product! You can alter this craft in any way thinkable. These simple and cheap coffee filter flowers’ colors can be changed to meet the season’s need.

I added my flowers to a vase with “dirt” (aka: coffee grinds). They look beautiful and the entire living room smells delicious.