PAPER FLOWERS
Happy Valentines Day! I really wanted to keep flowers around the apartment however a fresh bouquet every week isn't in the current budget (unfortunately). I've come across some really beautiful paper flowers so I thought I would give it a try!
It's a good idea to browse around and do your research since there are so many ways to cut and dye materials to make these but most of the instructions I used came from Two Shades of Pink blog! She does a great job of giving you the quick run down on a short video :)
Things you need:
Coffee Filters
Food Coloring
Scissors
Tape
Floral Steaks (optional)
1. Dye the coffee filters
You can experiment with different colors and amounts of water until you achieve the look you want. I wanted the flowers to have some dimension so I used two different bowls of dye and various amounts of red and yellow food coloring. I didn't use any rhyme or rhythm for dying them, just dunked them in and then squeezed the excess dye from the filters before laying them out.
2. Let the filters dry
Several blogs suggest laying your coffee filters out on a cookie sheet or wax paper and waiting for them to dry (rumor has it between 12-24 hours!). Being mildly impatient and only having two cookie sheets it quickly turned from this:
To this:
(I literally saran wrapped the entire table and the first batch was dried before I even finished dying the lot)
3. Scallop the filters
I used 6 coffee filters for each flower (per suggestion of Two Shades of Pink blog). Take the six filters and fold them in half twice then scallop the edges so they look like the picture below (they don't need to be perfect because they blend together really nicely regardless)
4. Fluffing the flowers
Take your pile of scalloped filters and pierce one of the floral steaks through the middle. Pinch the bottom of the pile to form around the steak and secure with tape. Start from the middle of your flower and pinch each layer individually until they're all done and your flower looks like this!
Vuala!
