How to Make Beautiful Coffee Filter Flowers

If you’re looking for a cheap, simple and pretty DIY project for your wedding or your home in general, coffee filter flowers could be just the right thing. Here’s how to create something beautiful to suit any stylish taste.

Photo via Just Simple Designs

Who knew coffee filters could look so pretty? The great thing about coffee filter flowers is that they can be used in so many different ways, from decor to centrepieces, place settings, wreaths and, if done in miniature, they’d look gorgeous attached to favour boxes! You could even create a bunch of them, attach them to ribbon wrapped florist’s wire et voila! a bouquet of flowers that will live on after your wedding and be a sweet keepsake of your special day. There’s also a variety of ways of making them (depending on your desired effect or the time you have to make them). Here’s a wide round up on the best tutorials to save all you crafty folk having to hunt them down.

Photo by Diana Li of Sparkle and Champagne on Etsy

Dying Coffee Filters

Coffee filters are wonderfully delicate looking and absorbent, perfect for dying! Use pastel water colours or watered down acrylic paint for a more intense colour or food colouring and natural dyes such as beetroot or tea for a vintage, yellowy brownish aged effect.

Photos via Emalee Design

The basic dying technique is very similar in all the tutorials. We found this step by step photo tutorial by Salvaged Whimsy on coffee filter dying to be very helpful. Erin oven dries the dyed coffee filters to speed up the process but you could always dry them flat on paper towels or air dry them by hanging from a string/washing line.

Top 10 Coffee Filter Flower DIY Tutorials + Ideas

Firsty, have a look over on Martha Stewart’s tutorial by Cassie Mae Chappell which provides a downloadable petal template. As Cassie Mae Chappell sells these roses in her shop, Mommy Makes Roses, this is quite a fiddly and tricky tutorial but definitely worth a look if you want to make realist looking roses.

Some Of The Best (And Easiest) Coffee Filter Flower Tutorials

1. Realistic Roses via Emalee Design – an in-depth photo tutorial using the intricate petal shape template by Martha Stewart mentioned above. This method is very detailed, it even involves rolling the edge of each petal around a pencil to create a natural effect. Emalee made plenty of these roses for her wedding decor! However, unless you have a lot of time, I think this style is best suited to small quantities such as bouquets or button holes.

2. Rolled Roses via Salvaged whimsy – a much simpler technique, involving cutting a spiral shape into your coffee filter and simply rolling it in on itself. Then using hot glue at the base to ensure the roses don’t unravel. (Full tutorial here.) The finished effect would be so pretty for a backdrop, or a wreath (like no. 8 above) and it wouldn’t take too long to create large quantities.

3. A Variety Of Roses via Aunt Peaches – this brilliant photo tutorial outlines three different techniques for creating coffee filter roses including a pleating technique, ruffling technique and a multi-layered technique to create larger roses. We love the effect of mixing and matching the different roses. These would make lovely, full, ‘floral’ centrepieces on a budget, to go in your living room or bedroom.

4. Super Easy Flowers (No Glue Gun Needed!) via Two Shades Of Pink – this is by far the easiest way to create coffee filter flowers quickly and in large quantities. All you need is coffee filters, scissors, masking tape and a stapler! Check out the video tutorial here.

Photo via Two Shades Of Pink

Coffee Filter Flower Ideas

5. Make pretty coffee filter flower place cards as seen at this awesome carnival themed wedding on 100 Layer Cake. This cute video demonstrates how to make the blue coffee filter flowers above. It’s just one minute long but it’s so helpful to watch the whole process from start to finish. It makes it look super easy and achievable.

Paper Flowers from pastoriii on Vimeo.

6. An example of using coffee filter flowers as a ceremony backdrop via Green Wedding Shoes).

7. Single stem coffee filter and paper flowers look modern and fresh on their own or pairs in bottles of different heights and sizes. (Tutorial via Green Wedding Shoes.)

8. These rose wreaths by Salvaged Whimsy are so romantic!

9. Dahlia pom poms – a modern yet whimsical touch to any room! (Full tutorial on Aunt Peaches). Attach the finished pom poms to a piece of string/ribbon hanging down vertically or strung across your bedroom space horizontally. If you like the simple, ruffled effect from photo no. 4. you can also make coffee filter pom poms using a similar stapling technique (watch the video tutorial here via Rhonna Designs).

10. Or add some ‘wow factor’ to a simple cake for a special occasion – design and tutorial by Miso Bakes via Half Baked – The Cake Blog.