Thursday, February 12, 2015

Coffee Filter Flowers

My grandpa's 85th birthday is just around the corner!  I am so excited to be reunited with my family as we celebrate such an incredible man.  We are working hard planning a party with an invite list that has well over 100 people on it.  Yikes.  How do you host that many people on a tight budget without making it look like you were digging through your couch looking for pennies?  It is possible my friends!

When I was talking to my husband about flowers for the party he said, "he's an 85 year old man.  Why do you need flowers for a man's birthday party?"  I just gave him a blank stare.  Flowers are a must in my opinion.  Besides, this is just as much for my grandma as it is for my grandpa.  Anyway, would you believe me if I told you I was able to purchase 12 bouquets of flowers AND 3 table arrangements (for food and entry table) for less than $20?  Well it's true.  And these bouquets are beautiful and you'd never know I used coffee filters and markers to make them. 

Coffee filter flowers are not brand new information.  I've made a few decorative pieces in my house using them.  But I haven't done them in this capacity, or volume.  So if you need something to do, please come and help my sister and I make 150 flowers!  We are going to be assembling them here and shipping them to Illinois for my cousin to put together into bouquets and wrap in the prettiest gold ribbon you've ever seen.  Besides, it was her idea to make coffee filter flowers!

Let's get down to business.  Here is what you need to do:

Materials:

coffee filters (5 per flower)
floral stakes (3 or 6 inch depending on what you're making-details on that below)
3 different washable markers
floral tape
glue gun
stapler
spray bottle

optional: Styrofoam, ribbon, vase

Note: If you're sticking flowers in Styrofoam, I would suggest buying 3 inch stakes.  If you're making bouquets, I'd use 6 inch stakes like I have below.

1.  Divide your coffee filters into stacks of 5 and staple the inside together with 4 staples top bottom, left and right making a square.  See below:



2.  Gather each filter up around the staples, one layer at a time.  When you're done it will look like it does below.


3.  Take the floral stake and wrap the wire around the stake, tucking it out of the way.



4.  Now insert the stake into the middle of your filters.  Hot glue the stake in place on the inside of the filters.  Press the filters up around the glue to secure in place.




5.  Now comes the hand cramping part.  :)  Thoroughly wrap the flower and stake with floral tape.  Wrap the tape very tightly, continuing to press the tape in place as you wrap around the stake.  When you think you've added enough tape, go around a few more times.  The idea is to securely connect the filters with the stake. 

I always start on the filters and make sure I have a little tail hanging off.  Then wrap down, then back up, then back down again. 

PS...don't mind the ink stained thumb.






6.  Once the flower is complete, gather the filters as tightly as you can and color the tips with your markers.  Here, I've used 3 different colors.  I would most certainly use more than one to create a more realistic look.


 

I look like I have elephant hands.  But I don't.  Really.


7.  Now for the fun part, take a squirt bottle and make sure it is set to "mist" and not "stream".  Spray the tips 2-3 times with water.  The colors will begin to run and blend together.  The flowers will wrinkle as they dry making the filters appear more like a pedal than a filter.  Lay the flowers on a paper towel to dry.





8.  Once flowers have dried, they can be arranged however you please.  I started sticking them in Styrofoam but found that the stakes were way to large so I had to cut them down.  However, the 6 inch stakes made a beautiful bouquet.  I used 7 flowers to make a bouquet and 17 flowers to make the table arrangement.


I was really excited at the prospect of make this table arrangement with the Styrofoam, however, the stakes were too large and kept running into each other.  Not to mention it would take nearly 30 flowers to make one arrangement.  I cut them down to 3 inch stakes and found I only need 17.





How cute are these?  I used the same method as I did in my DIY Wood Transfer Sign and made these cute drink, food and table labels for the party. 



I am in love with this table arrangement! I hope you are too!



Tuesday, February 10, 2015

DIY Wood Transfer Sign

Oh it feels so good to be creative!  So far today I have made a bracelet, a necklace, sugar cookie cut outs and this wood transfer sign on top of a trip to Hobby Lobby, Dollar Tree and Wal-Mart.  I still have dinner to make, wood to cut and trays to construct for my pantry project.  Oh, I haven't told you about my pantry project have I?  Well out of all the projects buzzing around in my head, I decided to start on reorganizing our pantry.  But that is a completely different post(s).  This post is about this:


I cannot even begin tell you how skeptical I have been about this project.  Skeptical and intimidated.  I've seen this on Pinterest plenty of times, read the posts and have thought...really?  That's it?  YES!  this project took less than 10 minutes, including sanding, painting and transferring the image.  And inexpensive I might add.  I bought a roll of wax paper for $1.18! 

I've had a sign like this in my head for the longest time so I knew what I've wanted to make.  I used Photoshop Elements to create the design, but of course any document program (Microsoft Word) will work just as well.  I flipped the image to make sure when I transferred it came out correctly.  

Here is what I did:

Materials:

glue stick
wax paper
printer paper
ink jet printer
image
wood
ruler/scissors

Directions:

1.  Glue a piece of printer paper onto wax paper using a glue stick.




 2.  Trim off the edges on the wax paper. I lined a metal ruler along the edge and tore the wax paper along the edge of the ruler.  Easy peasy.



 3.  Now, print your image onto the wax paper by placing it in your paper tray of your printer, wax side down.  DO NOT touch the image after it prints.  It'll smudge and smear.  I have a Brother printer with generic ink I bought off of Amazon.  No going to Staples.  No going to Kinkos.  No gluing the paper on the wood and dissolving it with water.  Nope, none, nada. 


4.  Now flip that sucker over onto your piece of wood.  I have a 6x12 scrap piece of wood in my garage I've been eying for a while now wondering what to do with it.  I sanded and painted it with a white acrylic paint. You may want to cut the image down so you don't end up with a crooked image.  Not me.  I'm a daredevil. 


5.  I used my handy dandy stone scraper to transfer the image onto the wood.  Hold the paper in place and gently scrape the paper along the image.  


6.  Wait for it.  Take a deep breath.  Let it out.  And remove the paper to find this:


I literally jumped up and down with excitement!  But quietly so not to wake the babies.  I couldn't believe it worked!  Look how fancy!! 



Be prepared for plenty more wood transfer projects.  This is a game changer for me people!