Coffee Filter Flowers

These coffee filter flowers are so pretty and SO easy (and cheap!) to make.  I found the idea on a darling site called Brown Paper Packages and decided to make these for my entryway (I just refinished a mirror and shelf and the poor shelf was looking awfully bare!).  Trust me, these are super simple and once you start you just might not stop... I'm thinking of making smaller flowers to affix to gifts - there are tons of things you can do with these!

Ok, here are the instructions:

Supplies:

8 coffee filters

Scissors

Glue

Wire

Floral Tape

Cut down 4 of the coffee filters as shown above (you can discard the small piece you just cut off).  

Now fold the filters individually (or two at a time) - you'll fold the filter 8 times total:

Fold 1

Fold 2

Fold 3

Fold 4

Snip the folded edge at an angle as shown above.

Open up one fold...

... and round out the edges to make a heart shape.  This does NOT have to be perfect - you won't be able to tell once you start assembling the flowers!

Once you've done this with all of the filters, separate the 4 smaller ones from the 4 larger ones.

Starting with a small filter, poke a hole through the middle and stick the floral wire through it.  You'll want to bend the top of the wire as shown above.  Dab just a touch of glue to the bent wire (I used hot glue, but really any kind will do)

Next comes the twisting!  This is a little confusing to explain, but trust me - you'll figure it out in no time!  All you need to do is start twisting the filter around the wire and onto itself.  See the picture above - this is the first filter twisted around the wire.

Next, slide another small filter onto the bottom and twist away!  You'll add all 4 small filters, then all 4 large filter - twisting in between each layer.

Here is what it looks like after the 4 small filters are on.  Really, you could stop here if you want a smaller flower.  I wanted nice big flowers for this project, so I kept going and added the larger filters!

Here is the final flower with all 8 filters.

All that's left to do is wrap the stem up with floral tape!  You'll want to wrap it really tight up around the base of the flower to keep it from unraveling or loosening.  Once that's secure, wrap the rest of the floral wire.  That's it!

You can display your flower alone or with several of them bunched together.  I have 3 displayed in a small vase in my entryway and love it!  I haven't tried it yet, but you can dye the coffee filters to make colored flowers - check out this great tutorial on how to do that.

Enjoy your beautiful flowers and happy creating!!