Coffee Filter Craft

I am really gung ho for this crafting thing right now and I also realize that it's only January 10th so it's hard to pat myself too much on the back just yet.  That being said I came across several packages of unused coffee filters.  About 6 months ago I had thrown out about 8 packages so I knew that we weren't going to use these either.  I decided to look up on Pinterest things that I could do with coffee filters.

I found a really cute garland so I decided to try it and make something for an upcoming baby shower at work.

Here's what you need:

Coffee filters

Food coloring

Glue gun

Now I had read the instructions on several projects but when it came time to do it I decided to just wing it. 

I gathered the coffee filters, some red food coloring (my project was going to be pink for the baby shower), and a pot with cold water

 

I put some red food coloring in the pot of cold water then added all the coffee filters.  I let them set for just a bit and then wrung them out.  You can wring them out pretty good as they are not too flimsy.  I then tried to just air dry them by leaving them out.  They were taking forever so I put them in the dryer.  Now I checked on them every 30 seconds or so because I didn't want anything catching on fire and they dried really quickly that way.

 

 

Next I took them individually and folded them in half then brought up the other two sides to make the beginning of a flower shape.

 

 

After folding I stapled them at the bottom to hold them together.

 

I then got out my glue gun and started to glue them into a white coffee filter.   

 

 

The original plan was to make a bunch of little flower balls but things didn't go quite as planned.

 

 

The flower didn't look full enough to me.  Hmmm....not sure really what to do as the original plan also included gluing the two of the above flowers together but like I said, it was not looking as full as I was wanting it to.

 

 

So I ended up just making a big flower ball and this is the finished product!

 

 

So while in my mind it was going to be several much smaller flower balls I'm still pretty happy with how it turned out. 

I wonder what will be my next project??  What is yours??

::UPDATE:: 
Here is a pic of how it looked in the break room.  Notice how we took it old school with the decorations by adding the paper chain! 

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