Ombre coffee filter wreath

Posted by Steph on June 8, 2012 · 8 Comments 

I wanted to change our door decor, as the lovely spring wreath that I made was very sun faded and we’re only a couple of weeks away from summer officially starting :)

I saw this a few weeks ago…

…and decided that I wanted something like this for our door. However, I didn’t want the expense of making a fabric wreath or buying the tye dye kit and if it didn’t work out…well I was worried that I would ruin an expensive wreath that I spent a lot of time making.

So then I came across this…

A DIY coffee filter wreath. Perfect! Coffee filters are cheap, so if I screwed it up I would only be out a few dollars for the filters and the time I put in to making it. I still wanted to incoporate the ombre look, so I figured food colouring would work just fine on the thin coffee filters!

I also decided that I was too cheap to buy any sort of store bought wreath form. Seriously, $15 for a styrofoam wreath? Forget it. Even with the 40% off coupon from Michael’s, I still wasn’t springing for one. So I used cardboard. Yeah, I’m classy like that.

I traced my spring wreath to get a properly proportioned wreath form.

I painted it with white craft paint so that the brown cardboard wouldn’t show through once it was finished.

I also had a little helper for this project.

Unfortunately, my little helper comes with a lot of fur…that sheds everywhere…and gets trapped in most of my projects.

Should I have shown that? Probably not, but I’m keeping it real here people. Anyone else with fur-babies understands.

I then used hot glue to attach scrunched up coffee filters to the back of my “wreath form” so that there was some extra fullness.

To scrunch the coffee filters, first I folded them in half.

Then I kind of scrunched them into a triangle/cone shape.

I overlapped them slightly to make sure there weren’t any gaps.

This is what it looked like from the back.

And from the front.

Then I glued the scrunched filters onto the front of the wreath in layers.

I continued this the whole way around the wreath. Kind of tedious, especially pulling all of the filters apart. Luckily, I was able to watch my HGTV boyfriend during the process.

Who else has a crush on Byran Baumler? I’m sure it’s not just me. He’s adorable, very funny, he can fix and build things….Anyway, where was I? Right, gluing on the filters.

Basically, you just keep layering the filters like that the whole way around the wreath. I also filled in any gaps that I saw as I went along. I ended up using 150 filters to fill up my wreath, but if you want an even fuller wreath you could use more filters and layer them more closely together.

Here is what the wreath looked like once all of the filters were glued on.

Look at those gorgeous ruffles!

At this point, you really could leave the wreath as is, or add little embellishments like paper butterflies. However, my heart was set on the ombre look.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any progress pictures of when I was “dying” my wreath. I kind of got in the zone and was concentrated on doing my best to fade the colour evenly.

It’s fairly easy, you just mix up whatever colour you’d like in a spray bottle that will spray a fine mist. Make sure the colour is quite concentrated or it won’t dye the filters properly. I highly recommend testing out your colour on a filter before spraying your entire wreath to make sure that you have the colour that you want. I wanted a turquoise colour for mine, so I ended up mixing 9 drops of blue food colouring and 3 drops of green in a full 9oz spray bottle.

Start at the top of the wreath and spray a light mist the whole way down. I chose to leave the very top of my wreath white, so I started to spray slightly down from the top. Go over the wreath again, just below where you started the first spray, to make the colour darker towards the bottom. Continue doing this so that your colour is darkest at the bottom and fades to lighter and lighter going up the wreath.

I left it out in the sun for about an hour, flipping it over part way through, to let it dry completely. Then I glued a ribbon to the back to be able to hang it.

Then I hung it on my front door!

I’m quite happy with how it turned out, and it will be easy to touch up the colour if it gets faded from the sun. I also love that it only cost a few dollars to make!! I sure do love thrifty projects :)

*I’m linking up to Serenity Now and How To Nest For Less*

I’m also going to be participating in the Bloggy Olympics. I’m really looking forward to all of the awesome projects and inspiration that will be coming my way! Look out for those posts soon :)

UPDATE: This project was featured at Serenity Now’s Weekend Bloggy Link Party!!

Filed under DIY, Things for the Home · Tagged with coffee filter wreath, DIY ombre coffee filter wreath, DIY ombre wreath, DIY wreath, ombre coffee filter wreath, ombre wreath