Member- moonadea
- 9 years ago
- Wedding: June 2012
Hey Bees,
A couple of you asked about how I made my centerpieces:
I finally got around to uploading the photos, so here goes.
First, you need to dye your coffee filters in whatever colors you like. Just use the standard white filters you find in any grocery. For my colors, I used about three or four different colors of pink, peach and yellow – you can really have infinite shades by combining these colors and varying how much water you add to the paint. Start with about 2 cups of water to about 1 teaspoon of paint and see what you like from there.
Just soak your filter in the colored water:
Then squeeze the excess water out (back into the bowl) and hang up your filter to dry:
A clothesline would work great. I actually taped up strands of string in my shower and did it that way. It takes about an hour or hour and a half to dry.
Supplies needed: dyed filters, 1 inch masking tape, scissors and sticks/twigs/whatever you are using for the stems. That’s it.
Take all your filters and fold them into sixteenths. (So fold them over in half, then into quarters, then again into eights, and once more so it’s sixteenths. You’ll end up with a skinny wedge shape.
You are going to cut the fat end of this wedge into a curve, which will be a petal shape, and cut about a 1/2 inch off the skinny end of the wedge so that it will open up. For the curve, start about 1/3 of the way down the wedge and just make it nice and even.
Now you are going to take the piece you just cut and unfold it, then cut a slit up one of your folded lines so it won’t be a closed circle, but an open circle you can stretch out.
You will need three or four filters per big flower, and 2 filters per little flower. (Little flowers are done exactly the same, except you will cut off more like 1.25 inchess of the bottom of the wedge instead of a half inch, so the petals are shorter.)
Take the cut, opened filters and start to gather them onto a piece of stretched out tape. I like the cut the tape at a diagonal on the ends, because it wraps up neater.You just have to kind of gather and fold the petals down as you go – takes a little practice, but you’ll get the hang of it.
Here’s a close up of the folds that are stuck down on the tape:
Once all 3 or 4 of the filters have been gathered onto the tape, place the end of a stick at the LEFT side of the tape, and start to roll it up.
This is the hardest part, and can’t really be shown in pictures. Basically, you want to wrap the strip around the stick while kind of cupping it – so your tape will kind of angle up as you roll, and every now and then you will have to gather the tape so it becomes at an even level again. DO NOT wrap the tape down around the stick, or you will end up with a tall cone flower instead of a nice fluffy one. Sorry it’s kind of confusing, but if you try it a few times you will see what I mean.
When you are done wrapping the tape around the stick, just fluff the petals a little bit. Gently take each layer starting with the outermost layer and just pull it out and down. This helps the flower open up and look fluffier instead of condensed.
You’re done!
For another variation, you can also cut the wedges into a pointy shape, instead of a curve:
Then your flower will look like this:
I also added leaves to mine. I made a leaf shape template then cut it out of green with white polka dots scrapbook paper. Then I took two of the leaf shapes and hot glued them together with a piece of floral wire running down the middle. (Just put a line of glue down the center of the back of one leaf, press the wire into it, then press the other leaf on top.) After they dried I wrapped the end of the floral wire around the stems.I don’t have a great picture of that right now, unfortunately.
So that’s it. : ) Pretty easy. For another miscellaneous tip, try making your center filter (so the one you put down first) a slightly darker shade than the other filters – having the center a bit more intensely colored makes them look more realistic in my opinion.
Thanks for looking! Hope someone can use this.
