Coffee Filter Flowers

One day I’m going to write a post called 100 Unusual Ways to use Coffee Filters. They are absurdly useful. The fiber quality on these suckers is so amazing it’s hard to believe they are Dirt Cheap. And I just love making flowers because, besides being beautiful, this is one of those projects where messiness only enhances the final result. You don’t have to be nimble fingered to be proud of what you made.If you have little ones at home, I suggest you check out some of the many similar tutorials aimed at kids. This is also a great project for  parties or as baby/bridal shower centerpieces. Years ago, three of us got an assembly line going and knocked out 15 centerpieces in an afternoon for an event that eventually became known as “The Purpleist Bat Mitzvah in East Jersey.”….but I digress.This project is not new. First time I made coffee filter flowers was with my Grandnanna in the early eighties. They were yellow, to match her all yellow living room, of course. We also made pink ones out of pink toilet tissue to go in her pink kitchen, but that’s a story for another time. All I know is that when we finished those yellow flowers, she put them in her fanciest crystal vase and they went straight up on the mantel.
That’s right: The Mantel.

Right there next to the ash tray and the wax grapes and the painting of a Parisian bridge on black velvet: My Flowers. I never felt so special in my life. 

They stayed there up on that mantel several glorious years, until one winter day in 1987 when Grandnanna discovered “a crazy mustache man with long fingernails and a tambourine!” living in her basement.

Y’all, I’m not even joking. If you have a crawl space, go and check it for people with mustaches right now. You’ll feel better.

Anyway…Mustache Man had been there for months. Totally undetected. Neighbors later reported hearing a tambourine late at night, but by then Grandnanna had taken off her hearing aid and never heard a thing…until one day she ventured down for holiday decorations and found him there in the crawl space, eating pork rinds and reading Kafke (seriously, Kafke?)….so she screamed, he screamed, someone threw an Easter basket, and then Mustache Man went crazier than a blind dog in a meat house, running all over, knocking over furniture, screaming and shaking his tambourine.  He grabbed two things before he reached the front door; Grandnanna’s purse and the crystal vase with my yellow flowers. 

Yeah, in retrospect, I know he grabbed the vase because it looked easy to pawn, but when I heard the story, my ten-year-old ego assumed it was a sign my flowers were in hot demand. Obviously.

To my logic: People who like mustaches + People who like pork rinds + People who like tambourines + People who like Kafka = People who will buy my flowers. Clearly.

An empire was born. 

I  entertained visions of people across the nation, sitting down on their elegant sofas, eating pork rinds, gently tapping their tambourines in praise of the flowers up there on their mantels. I was going to start a decorative movement! The plan for this craft-tastic empire was simple: get Hallmark to sell them in their stores and offer a free brownie with every purchase. All I needed to start the movement was time, coffee filters, and a whole lot of brownies. Twenty years later, I’m still working on it.
Hallmark: call me.

Y’all: grab your tambourine and join in the movement!