Filter Paper Posies

As promised here:   the scoop on these lovely paper posies....

 I first saw them on Alice W's blog Thoughts from Alice W.  Then again, in Somerset Life Magazine.  Alice has abbreviated directions on her blog here.  Her blog is so beautiful and these coffee filter paper posies she has made are romantic and vintage looking.  However, romantic and vintage were the last thing Bonnie wanted for her graduation party---emphasis on no vintage!

We strayed from Alice's directions a bit to achieve the look we wanted.  I thought we would use purple and green food coloring in water as Alice did with red food coloring in tea to get her pink look.   Wrong.  The purple separated out in to blue and red in the filters as they dried.  I guess that why it's called food coloring and not called paint.  So, I needed to paint the filters instead of dipping them.  To make that easier, I ironed them flat first.  I could iron 20-30 at a time and it only took a few seconds, so wasn't a big deal.

Then, using lots of water and just a bit of paint, I painted the filters.

You can paint a pile of them at once, just make sure you separate each one out a bit because after they are wet, it's harder to get them apart.  I left lots of variation in the paint (a.k.a. sloppy) so there was dimension to the balls.

I just spread them out on newspapers to dry, overlapping because of space.

We experimented with pinning them on various ways but ended up liking the way Alice did it with three together all gathered up in an individual posy.

Green, purple, and white were the graduation colors.

Then we pinned them on to styrofoam balls with wig pins.  Any big pin will work, but make sure it's big so they stay in.  We hung these with fish line from the ceiling above the kitchen island.  I think they would be beautiful as a topiary on a shelf or even just sitting as a ball on a table or shelf.  As Alice says, you can vary the size by the styrofoam balls and if you buy the filters for a 4 cup coffee maker they will be smaller too.

REMINDER #1:  You can still sign up for my giveaway here!

REMINDER #2: It's "Junk"le Bells in May on Monday, hope you join up! Don't know what "Junk"le Bells is?  Read more here.