There is no doubt that we love flowers, crafting and color around our home. I usually grab a fresh bunch of markdown flowers on our weekly shopping trip, we are always creating something around here and colors are just inevitable with kids and cheeriness. We also like up-cycling quite a lot too. If I can upcycle something into a craft, I usually will, for two reasons: 1) It makes crafting even cheaper, and 2) I love showing the kids that things can become something more than meets the eye.
Last year while at the store we grabbed the wrong size coffee filters and naturally, even though we tried to get them to work – they didn’t. So, we were left with a package of coffee filters. We turned some into snowflakes this last winter and this last week I wanted to turn them into something even more fun!
We turned them into some fun flowers! A and I had a lot of fun doing this and she got quite a kick out of her new flowers that we can put anywhere and could not wait to show daddy when he came home. These are pretty simple and fun -plus, I think they are adorable for Mother’s Day or anytime, really!
Here’s What You Need:
- Coffee Filters
- Markers
- Pipecleaners for Stems
- Spray Bottle with Water
- A cookie sheet
- A baking rack
- A hair dryer (optional)
Here’s the Process!
First Up – Fold the coffee filter into fourths. Have your little one color all over them with markers. Since my daughter loves to mix the colors, I was intentional in what I gave her. I gave her blues together, pinks, oranges and yellows, blues and pinks, etc. so all of her flowers would turn to fun blended colors and not turn to black or brown. Have your little one color on both sides of the coffee filter. Have your child put them on top of the baking rack sitting in the cookie sheet when they are done with each one.
Next – You are going to use the spray bottle filled with water to spritz the coffee filters. You can’t really have too much water but I liked ours to be damp enough to see the water spread but not sopping wet. Let them sit for about 5 minutes. During this time I had her working on some other filters. 
Then – proceed to open them up and either set them in the sun to dry or you can use a hair dryer. We used a hair dryer for ours with medium/high heat and they were each dry in about 30 seconds each. Since we did it during B’s nap time I wanted to speed up the process. If we weren’t in a hurry we probably would have set them out in the sun.
Now that they are dry – it’s time for the stems. You are going to pinch together the center of the coffee filters and wrap your pipe cleaner around the pinched end. This is going to keep your coffee filter bunched into a free form flower. Once the first end is around the filter bring the opposite end to the top so that it will wrap around the top too. Give it a tight wrap around the top and gently wrap the two pieces together down the stem so it looks like one piece.
Once You Have Done This to All Of Them – find a fun vase if you choose and you are all set with your bouquet of flowers! This are so fun and perfect for a fun little decoration around the house, a cute craft for Mother’s Day or a birthday for your little one to make someone special!
Enjoy your Flowers!
What do you think of our fun Freeform Flowers? They turned out so cute and we have a bundle with a variety of colors! I love that my daughter can feel like she has her own flowers to enjoy and we don’t have to worry about the water spilling from real flowers!
Pssst: Our Crayola giveaway ends tomorrow and there’s also some great free coloring pages to snatch up, if you haven’t already!
