Click here to read Starched Coffee Filter Flowers Craft on Hands On As We Grow
Make pretty starched coffee filter flowers with your kids. These are a perfect spring craft to do together!
Have you used starch in your crafts with the kids? After this flower craft, I’m so excited to find new ways to use it.
I got inspired to make these starched coffee filter flowers from Ms. Motta’s Mixed Media’s Chulily-inspired artwork.
The boys and I started by coloring our coffee filters. This actually took us a couple of tries. We failed a couple of times before going back to a tried and true method.
Our first fail was by trying to do glue resist coffee filters. Henry glued all over the coffee filters only to find that it soaked through.
I moved them off my dining room table surface and onto newspapers. They stuck there, good. I asked on Facebook for other suggestions, but we didn’t try it again (yet!).
I know its possible, I saw Dilly-Dali Art do it with rubber cement!
The second fail was with trying a new method of watercolor coffee filters. This time trying it outside with a watering can.
Wetting down the coffee filters then dripping them with food coloring and then watering them again to spread the colors. This worked wonderfully. Until they dried and were still almost completely white with only spots of colors.
How to Make Starched Coffee Filter Flowers
The coffee filters weren’t ruined with these at least, so we tried again. Back to a method we did last year.
Spin Art! A success! Painted spin art coffee filters.
George was even able to join in this art process. I watered down some paint (just a little) so it could be spooned into the salad spinner. Laying a coffee filter in the spinner, drip some paint on it and spin!
George dropped the paint in and I spun!
Henry did a bunch too! You can see him in action from last year’s Spin Art Coffee Filter Streamers.
Now, onto the good part.
The starch.
I lined up a bunch of pop cans (yes, I’m a pop drinker…) with our painted coffee filters and some spray starch (affiliate link).
Henry’s job was to put the coffee filters on the can. Pressing them over and around the can. Getting them as good and creased as he could.
Trying to keep it real here. Henry was in whine mode here and whined like crazy when the coffee filters wouldn’t stay where he left it and it popped back up.
There was fit after fit. Relate to that?
Once the coffee filters are on the cans and in place, spray them with the liquid starch. Henry did a few of them but couldn’t grasp the concept of holding the can back a ways, or moving it around.
He held it within a couple of inches each time and didn’t move. There were a lot of puddles of starch on the coffee filters.
More whining.
More fits were had when I tried to help and show him. That’s just how it goes sometimes.
Then we let them dry. They took about a good day to dry.
I kept coming back to check them and gave them another spray because I didn’t know if they were going to be stiff enough to hold its shape.
I probably ended up putting on three good coats of starch.
That may not have been necessary, but with the previous fails for this project, I just didn’t want to have to start over again.
Finally, once the coffee filters were dry, we could make our flowers!
I didn’t really have a plan for the starched coffee filters when I started. I just knew I wanted to try the starch.
All I could come up with at the time were flowers. I still haven’t come up with anything much better, so I’m open to suggestions!
The starched coffee filter flowers were simple to make.
- We doubled up the coffee filters, placing one inside the other and gluing them together.
- Glue a pom pom in the center of the flower petals.
- Glue down a craft stick (either a colored one like we got from CraftProjectIdeas, or paint a regular one) as the stem.
- Add a couple colorful buttons for ‘leaves’.
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