I promised my mother in law that I would make her a wreath at the same time as my mother's. My mother in law's took a wee bit longer, and I was finally finished tonight. Rather than the earth tone colors my mother wanted, my MIL wanted greens, as that would match more things.
That was actually easier to paint. So to show some of the pictures of the in between of actually making the flowers, I decided to take pictures!
I think I like the multi-colored one better. I don't like the all-green one quite as much. Then again, it isn't going on my door!
So here's how to actually make these time-consuming flowers (that can be
crushed so quickly if your car battery dies in the Kroger parking lot
and the dog starts freaking out and jumps into the back trunk area (is
it called a trunk in a Highlander?)....not that that happened).
After you dye/paint all of the coffee filters (and let them dry), you'll want to fold all of your flowers. This lets you keep them organized if you do the project over multiple days (which is highly recommended, unless you've solved for the space-time continuum). Take 3 to 4 (I used 3 for all of these flowers) filters and put them on top of each other. Fold the filters in half twice so you get a cone.
As a side note, this reminded me of making snow flake chains in school. So then cut out the bottom out of the coffee filter. You can kind of see what I did in this picture. You're going to twist the centers, kind of like a figure eight. This took me a little bit of time to figure out, once you do, it's easy. Take each center and put on the end of a piece of masking tape. I found it's better to have too much masking tape then too little!
Then it's time for the ruffles. The cut remaining part of the coffee filters (just one quick snip). Then make overlapping ruffles along the masking tape, like so. I can't decide if I liked small ruffles or larger ones. I think you can do more (and if you are running out of coffee filters) with the large ruffles, but small ones are good for diversity!
Once you are done with the first filter, just pick up with the second and keep going until you've used all 3 filters to make a line of ruffles. Now it's time to roll the flowers. You'll want to start with the centers side and start rolling the flower. You can shape it however you want, depending on how tight or loose you want the flower. I found that rolling it tighter in the center makes prettier flowers. Plus if you used large ruffles, you can make the tape tighter but the flowers fuller.
Keep going and if you have extra tape on the end, either wrap it around the flower or cut it. You'll end up with a nice pretty carnationy looking flower!
While I was gluing the flowers onto the wreath, I found sometimes having the end of the flower to slide under other flowers helpful. Other times, I cut the bottom off and glued it flat. I think this gives a nice variety of flowers either facing straight up or to the side. It's your wreath, do as you please. Although after making two...I highly doubt I'll do another one.
Side Note: HOLY CRAP Don't burn yourself with a hot glue gun. It hurts...like major hurt. I held an ice cube on my finger for over an hour and still burned. It blistered almost immediately.
I think it turned out nicely. I was a little annoyed it got smushed in the back seat, but such is life. I'm just glad to be done with the project!
In the mean time, we began painting our furniture to a Cabernet color. It was a little too pink at first, but turned into a very nice shade of red that really pops with the room. We still have a few more pieces to paint.
