messy.beautiful: Mama's Got a Wreath

Monday, February 13, 2012

Mama's Got a Wreath

I finally got around to it.

I've seen these wreaths all over and I "reserved" the box of coffee filters and put them aside. Actually, it was more like "hey no one drinks coffee here right, so these are up for grabs...these are mine."...

I had seen the natural color filters and thought I was going to make that one, but having only the white ones, I decided to frugally make do.

But I wasn't really impressed with the way the white ones looked. Maybe it was just me, but they were so darn obvious: Hi, I am a scrunched up coffee filter. Trying to look pretty.

And besides, I wanted to do a completely different color. And I hadn't really seen any turquoise wreaths....so.

No need for a full blown tutorial -- it's pretty much along these lines...
1. Grab a box of coffee filters.
2. In a bucket, mix warm water and a few drops of food coloring. Make the color a little more intense than what you are desiring as it will fade a little when dry.
3. Place filters in colored water and pretend you are a human manual washing machine.
4. Take filters out, squeeze excess water out and lay flat to dry on newspaper.
5. After drying, you may want to repeat Steps 3 and 4 to get the desired color.

When dry,
6. Place filter in palm of left hand and push in middle with available right pointer finger until you get a slightly scrunched flower look. Sort of like what you do to dinner napkins when you put then in the napkin ring holders.
7. Hot glue "stem tip" and place onto desired spot on wreath. Push down with end of unsharpened pencil (so as to not burn those fingers --- you do use a whole box of filters lol).
8. Keep going until wreath is complete.

Some tips:
About halfway, you WILL think it looks like a piece of junk...just keep going. Ignore the "look at me, using stained scrunched COFFEE FILTERS as art" comments dancing in your head.

Also I put the filters in the middle of the wreath and fluffed as I went.I didnt want just the flat/folded look. I also filled in whatever spots showed.

And my biggest tip --- HOW TO SAVE MONEY ON THIS WREATH, as it only cost me $2 bucks....
DON'T buy any wreath, especially from Michaeal's. It's just gonna get all covered up. Instead, I bought a foam board (pk os 2 for $4) and just asked my husband to cut the wreath shape from it. Now, I also have an additional foam piece to do another wreath.