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I love living in the south, but one thing I miss the most in the Spring are peonies. They don't grow in the south because it's too hot and humid.

After scouring the net and finding several (confusing) tutorials, I set out to make my own coffee filter peonies. Once I mastered the perfect shape, I shared how to make these realistic ruffled peonies in THIS VIDEO on my YouTube channel.

Since then, I've had several of you ask for a step by step tutorial with pictures. So that's what you'll find today. I know we all learn and process information in different ways, so this tutorial will show you how I dye and make my popular coffee filter peonies.

• white coffee filters (basket rather than cone shape)
• instant coffee (the cheap dollar store is fine) or tea stain (made by soaking a couple teabags in warm water)
• food coloring (I used this concentrated gel set)
• bowls and spoons
• floral wire (I used 19 gauge wire)
• floral tape
• hot glue
• scissors

The first step is to dye your coffee filters. I wanted my finished peonies to have soft, graduated colors, so here is what I did.

1. Prepare a bowl of warm water, dissolving about 1 tsp instant coffee
2. Prepare another bowl of water with the lightest shade of food coloring (I mixed pink, red, orange and yellow to get a pinky peach color)
3. Separate coffee filters into a big stack
4. Loosely fold 4 or 5 filters and dip into one of the stains
5. Gently squeeze excess water out
6. Separate filters and lay flat to dry on counter or cookie sheets (overlapping slightly is fine)
7. Add some more dye to deepen the color a little bit and dye a few more coffee filters - you can repeat this step as many times as you want to get darker colors

Important note: each of my DIY peony flowers take 6 coffee filters, so plan ahead while you're dying the different shades

The coffee filters dry fairly fast, usually within an hour. I did flip them over to dry the backsides to speed up drying. You do want them completely dry before you make the DIY peonies.

Tip: If you think you'll make more peonies another time, go ahead and dye a whole bunch of coffee filters so you have them ready to go!

1. Pick 6 filters, 2 each of a light, medium and dark shade. Separate them into twos.
2. Fold each set of two filters in half and then in half again to create a pie shape.
3. The filters that will form the outer petals will be folded in half twice more.
4. Cut edges of filters as shown below or refer to the VIDEO for details.

Shape the peonies

Now you're ready to display your handmade peonies in a vase, basket or vessel! I paired one of my DIY ruffled flour sack towels with a basket and a vase filled with coffee filter peonies for a little extra charm.

I hope you're inspired to turn some coffee filters into handmade peonies! They will last forever.

• How to make a coffee filter tree
  
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