Tea-Stained Coffee Filter Wreath

Fill a large pot with water and add approximately 5 black tea bags. Let the water come to a boil, then reduce to {very} low heat. I steeped approximately 25 filters at a time, but adjust this number according to the size of your pot. You just want to make sure that the filters are covered in water. For the first batch, I left the tea bags in the water. As you’ll notice later in the tutorial, some of my filters ended up with some really dark staining; I think it’s the ones from this batch. I like how they turned out, but it’s up to you if you want this look or not. The first batch of coffee filters I left in for about 30 minutes, the second for 20, and the third set for 10 minutes. I was going for some variety in the colors of the filters, though I didn’t notice much of a difference.

Let your coffee filters dry overnight. I’ve heard of people using pant hangers to dry the filters, but we don’t have any of those. I just laid out a few paper towels and stacked the wet filters on top. As soon as the top filters felt dry I removed them from the stack. This seemed to allow the filters at the bottom to dry faster.

When all the coffee filters were dry, I gathered up my materials and started assembling the wreath. To start, I twisted the filters at their center. After some trial and error, I found that twisting them tightly actually made it more difficult to get the pins through. It’s much easier to twist the upper portion tightly and leave the end flat. The straight pins weren’t holding the filters as well as I had originally hoped, so I decided to also tape them down for more stability. This seems to be holding up very well, and it’s still removable so I can re-use the foam core later.

I left an open space at the top of the wreath to attach the ribbon. As soon as it was hung though I didn’t like the open space and added a few extra filters on top of the ribbon. Once the wreath was hung in place, I looked at the wreath from every angle and filled in all the empty spaces.

The depth that the crumpled, ruffled filters brings makes me giddy. I wish more of the edges would have gotten really browned, because I’m loving that look. I think it would be possible to slightly burn the edges to get that same look {though don’t take my word for it – I haven’t tried it myself}!