I must admit, when I first heard of this craft, I was skeptical. I mean, just how good can a hydrangea flower look when made out of coffee filters? .. turns out .. VERY!! So many people on Pinterest were raving about it, so I decided to give it a go and I was very pleasantly surprised with the results!
I checked out Hiedi from DIY Dreaming on Facebook who explained how she had achieved this look. I’m sure there’s so many different ways to do this, but let me share how I made mine after following her instructions.
Here’s what you need for your coffee filter hydrangea
Commercial coffee filters – I used these ones from Amazon
Some watercolour paint or food colouring in different colours
Two bowls
A pencil (or pen)
Some sharp scissors
Pair of pliers
Some wire or an old artificial flower on a stem
painting your coffee filters
To make one flower I used 8 coffee filters. I dyed 4 in a slightly lighter colour, and 4 in a darker variety. I’m sure there’s LOADS of different ways of doing this (food colouring being one of them!). I used water colour paint to mix in with the water and that worked great. You can add as much or as little paint as you want, depending on the strength of colour you’re trying to achieve.
Add some water in a bowl, mix your paint and dunk in your filters. Leave them to soak for about half an hour before taking them out, spacing them and leaving them to dry.
I made some pink and some blue ones so the colour on some of these pics may switch!
As you can see, some of the water colour paint didn’t dissolve completely and made some darker patches. Like this one below. I actually liked that as I wanted to have some variety in the colours!
Folding your filter
Once they are completely dried you’re going to fold them in half a total of 4 times. Now, I forgot to take photos with the coloured filters, so took some with an unpainted one so you can see what I mean!
Fold double 
and fold double again 
Fold a third time 
And fold a fourth time, until you’re left with a little “pizza slice”
Take a pencil (I used a pen for the sake of the photo, but a pencil will leave less obvious marks!) and draw 4 circles and a “trunk” shape on your triangle. See the above pic.
Once you’ve done this, cut around the edges until you are left with the design of the petals. Make sure you cut right around the edges to separate all the flowers.
Unfold your filter. You should now be left with something that resembles this:
Repeat this process for all 8 filters. You can cut 2 filters at a time, although it really doesn’t take that long to do them one by one.
Once you’ve cut all your filters, take your wire or artificial flower to create a stem. I used some old artificial flowers that already had the leaves attached (I’m being lazy .. or clever depending on what way you look at things 😉 .. ). However, a sturdy wire covered in some floral tape will do the trick too!
Pierce all 8 filters with the wire in the middle until all of them are popped onto the wire. Like this:
With the pliers I created a small loop to keep all the filters in place.
Use some hot glue to secure the bottom filter onto the wire. Once that is done, I used a small amount of hot glue and did the same for each layer, gluing the filter onto the wire at each level. It just helps to create a much more sturdy flower.
folding your flower
When all the glue has dried, fold the top filter and give it a good squeeze together to create the centre of your flower.
Follow the same process for each filter, folding the filter up and giving it a good squeeze to create the different layers of the flower.
catch the video!!
You can see how I did this during a Facebook Live video here, where I’ll take you through each step!
Once all the layers have been squeezed and scrunched together, you’ll be left with a gorgeous hydrangea flower just like this one:
I love how these colours compliment each other and it gives you an idea of the different effect you can achieve with a variety of colours.
In fact, I liked them so much, I made a third flower with a combination of pink and blues.
Like the vase? You can see how I used a second hand vase to create this “bobble vase” here.
Pin me for later!
Some of the links in this post may be affiliate links, which means I earn a small commission if you decide to use my link to purchase something (at no extra cost to you!). This will allow me to continue to share great ideas and projects with you guys, so I would be grateful if you did!
Check these out while you’re here too!
Follow me on Social Media!
Leave a Reply