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If you’ve been keeping up with all the changes on Home Beautifully, you know there’s been LOTS going on. We have a new baby on the way and made a big move all the way across the country, from Maryland to California. We’re staying with family until baby girl arrives in the fall. So all of our belongings are packed up in storage. Decorating temporary housing is challenging (particularly when it’s someone else’s house!).

But since I’m smack dab in my nesting phase, I’m having a hard time resting little DIY decor touches here and there. My in-laws carved out a cute little space for my son’s nursery. I’ve been dying to put some Home Beautifully polish on it. A while back, I crafted an easy, affordable coffee filter wreath for our winter mantle and had so much fun making it. I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to dip dye a coffee filter wreath for above my baby’s changing table. Interested in learning more? Keep on reading for a beginner-friendly tutorial all about how to make a DIY dyed coffee filter wreath for under $10!

Step 1: Gather Your Supplies

To make your wreath, you’re gonna want to gather up the following:

You’re also going to need a bowl for dunking, a poker (like a knitting needle or a pencil), baking sheets, and an oven.

I got a bunch of these supplies from Michaels (yeah, coupons!) and CVS. You can also pick up your goodies pretty cheaply from Amazon. You can click on the links above to check out what Amazon offers (heads up for some affiliate links!). I had my $3.99 hot glue gun and baking sheets already on hand. The most expensive item in the bunch was the wreath form. If you’re able to use a coupon and save some cash, even better!

Step 2: Dye, Dye, and Dye Some More

Coffee filter wreaths look lovely when they’re plain, either using white or unbleached coffee filters. Check out this baby as a good example. But for our nursery, I wanted a wreath in a blue-gray color to tie into our existing decorations. Time to dye! I picked up this little bottle of acrylic paint for 39 cents at Michaels in the color Blue Jean. Using an old plastic Tupperware container, I diluted the paint with tap water. Then, I stirred til it looked consistent. Then, I dunked my filters. And I dunked some more.

Not gonna lie: dip dying coffee filters takes awhile. I separated the filters into clusters of about ten, dunked them in my watered-down paint, then wrung out any excess water. In time, I had stacks and stacks of soppy blue-grey filters, sitting on paper towels on my in-law’s kitchen counter.

To speed up the drying process, I baked the filters on coffee sheets in the oven. I set the temperature to 250 degrees. You guys: this step took forever. The trick here is to put a relatively thin stack of filters on the cookie sheet so they can bake well. The problem, though, is the stacks and stacks of soggy filters waiting to bake. I sat by the oven for about two and a half hours, with a timer dinging every ten minutes so I could load in a new batch or turn over any undried filters. While baking the filters dried them faster, the process took a good deal of effort. Next time, honestly, I’ll probably just cover the dining room table in newspaper and set them out to dry overnight. #lazy

Step 3: Make Your Flowers

Next step for your coffee filter wreath, you need to make your filter flowers. Use a poker, like a knitting needle or a pencil. Center your poker on the filter, then smoosh up the sides. (Yup, “smoosh” is the technical term here.) In the past, I’ve used a knitting needle and ended up with tightly smooshed florets, which turned out well. In fact, I made a whole YouTube tutorial for it, which I’ll embed below. This time around, I used an old cigar container — the metal tube thingie that individual cigars are packed in. My knitting needles are somewhere hidden in a box within the depths of a storage container. It turns out, I preferred using the cigar case as a poker anyway. The tip had a larger diameter, so I ended up having to make a lot fewer florets to get the job done, and my wreath still looked all thick and lovely.

Step 4: Glue, Baby, Glue

Warning: if you’re anything like me, you WILL burn yourself a bajilliony times (yup, another technical term for a really big number) while finishing this project. Be prepared to go through lots and lots of glue sticks. I ended up using around 15 mini glue sticks. Put a dollop of hot glue on the end of your filter flower, then using your poker, stick it onto your wreath from. I work in concentric rings when I make these wreaths, first gluing down a ring of flowers in the middle of the wreath, then an inside ring, and lastly an outside ring. Finally, I glue in additional filter flowers anywhere the wreath looks patchy or sparse. For this wreath to sit flat against the wall, I didn’t affix any flowers onto the back.

Step 5: Hang and Love

To hang up this bad boy, I used a little loop of twine, which I hot glued onto the back of the wreath form. Then using a level and tape measure, I ever so carefully hung this smack dab in the middle of the changing table, between our two IKEA prints. (I’m kidding. I eyeballed this baby without any measuring. I went rogue.) I love how it turned out! The wreath adds such a fun and kind of unexpected touch to the nursery. Plus, if it falls while we’re changing the baby (heaven forbid), the wreath is light enough not to cause any damage. It weighs maybe a pound.