Giant Pumpkin Wreath

I am in love with all the coffee filter wreathes currently floating around the blogosphere. I wanted to try my hand at making one myself. I knew if I used tea bags I could make the coffee filters a yummy tan ~ perfect for fall. But I decided to take it one step further and try to dye the coffee filters a color. The only thing I had on hand was food coloring, so I thought lets try it! Yes, this giant pumpkin wreath is made with food coloring coffee filters!!

Here's how I did it:

I filled my sink with coffee filters and added just enough water to cover the filters. I then added the food coloring, I knew I wanted a high concentration of color so I used as little water as possible. I used Wilton's Orange food coloring in paste form. I prefer paste whenever I use food coloring. You can control the amount used so much better than drops. I used about half the bottle.

To be honest I had no idea if this would work, but I was amazingly surprised because IT did. You have to let the filters soak for at least 2 hours in the water. If I hadn't needed to use my sink I would have left them all day, just to see how orange they could get.

I wrung out my filters and left them in the sun to dry. It took several  hours for them to dry completely.

After I prepped my wreath by wrapping it in muslin, I formed and hot glued my "scrunch-ied" filters to the wreath, after about a half an hour of "scrunching" and gluing and I was done. When my 6 year old saw it, he exclaimed "...it's like a giant pumpkin!". After that I knew just how to proceed with the rest of the wreath.

I made the stem from a scrap of cardboard, painted it and hot clued it to the back and glued a few green pipe cleaners as vines. The pumpkin wouldn't be complete without a giant spider and a few spooky webs... so I added those as well.

And the best part is: I got everything at the dollar store. This wreath cost me around $3.00 to make. Dollar store items:

Wreath

Coffee Filters

Spider

Everything else I had around the house:

Food Coloring

Muslin

Spider Webbing

Cardboard 

Pipe Cleaners

I absolutely love the color of the filters. They have a bit of a tie dyed look which is way better than just orange tissue paper, plus the filters really held up to getting wet, food coloring, drying, scrunch-ied and then glued. I've never seen tissue paper do that!!

This is such a kid friendly craft, my boys and I had a great time making it!! I am thinking a green wreath for Christmas would look fantastic.

Linking:

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