Did you know coffee filters are great things to use in kids’ crafts? Coffee filters cost next to nothing, so it is definitely a budget-friendly craft item! Learn how to dye coffee filters the easy way in this post!
How to Dye Coffee Filters the Easy Way
I’m prepping these coffee filters for a flower craft I plan to do with some kids here soon! What is nice about this is, if you are limited for time and don’t have the time to wait for the filters to dry during your art class time or whatever, you can dye these at home first and they will be all ready to go for the kids to use in their craft project.
:: pin it ::
Or, if you have the time or the appropriate age of kids that can do these themselves, it is also a super fun thing for them to do!
Here’s what you need:
- basket style coffee filters (the cheap ones are great for this!)
- liquid food coloring
- water
- bowls
Start by taking your coffee filters and separating them into groups of about 5. You don’t need to count them out necessarily; you just don’t want to take the stack of them all together like this.
Separate them into smaller stacks, like this below.
Add water to your bowls. So for my size bowls, I put about 4 cups of water in each bowl and it was perfect. You want the coffee filters to be completely submerged when you put them in.
Next, add your food coloring.
Let’s talk about this liquid food coloring. 🙂 This is available most likely at your local grocery store, but if you have a hard time finding it, you’re not alone! I went to my local store here; I knew they had it because it was available on their app. So, I looked in the baking section where all of that kind of stuff is, but no luck!! Come to find out, they put it with the all of the extracts which are with the spices. And I was quite happy to see that my store had the primary colors as well as the neon! Yay! So, if you are searching for it, that may be the place to check. Just thought I’d share that bit of information. 🙂
Here’s what I did:
- the purple I did 20 drops
- the yellow I did 25 drops
- the pink I did 20 drops
- the blue I did 20 drops
(updated– after I did it…. I didn’t care for the purple, but I didn’t have time to do it again, so I kept it. 🙂 Next time, I would add a lot more of the purple drops as it turned out more pinkish in color.)
This is all preference, so do what you think looks good! I know with the lighter colors, it takes more food coloring to color them, that’s why I did more of the yellow drops.
And, if they don’t turn out dark enough in color the first time, you can always color them again a second time with more color!
Add the drops to each of your bowls, stir it around and add the coffee filters. Put them in, then give them a little push to be sure they are submerged completely.
I let mine sit in the water for about 1.5 hours, but even after 30 minutes they were pretty vibrant in color.
Next, remove them from the water. In the sink is a great place to do this. You can dump out the water and squeeze them out a bit before laying them out to dry.
You can put these on cookie sheets with paper towels and stagger them so they aren’t directly on top of each other. (Remember if you put different colors touching each other, some of the color will bleed onto the other.)
But, if you have a lot of them to do at once, like I did, a garbage bag or paper towels on a counter or table works just as well!
Sometimes you may have some that you cannot get separated into a single filter. No worries! Once they dry a little bit, you will be able to easily separate them!
Let them dry completely. This doesn’t take long; coffee filters dry pretty fast!! (Again, if you aren’t satisfied with a color, simply do that one a second time with more food coloring drops.)
Once they are completely dry, they are ready to use in some FUN crafts! I can’t wait to use all these fun colors in my next coffee filter flower craft!
I love all these rainbow colors!
Another budget friendly item to use in kids’ crafts are paper plates!
Check out this post on all these cute paper plate craft ideas:
