Rainbow Coffee Filters

This is a simple activity to create beautiful rainbows for Spring. We always seem to drag out the coffee filters to draw or color on.  I think I have a zillion posts about coffee filters so at the end of this post you can click on the links to see them.

Materials Needed

Coffee Filters

Water-based Markers

Newspaper

Spray Bottle with water

Make sure to lay down some newspaper on your work area. Then begin coloring and drawing rainbows on coffee filters.

After you have filled up your coffee filter with marker colors, then spray some water and make sure newspaper in underneath because the color will bleed through. Also, not to much water or the colors will completely disappear!

Ta da! Happy Rainbow Making...we may make a garland of these...

Coffee Filter Ideas:

Tie Dye Coffee Filter Fall Leaves

Coffee Filter Turkey Cards

Coffee Filter Flowers

Coffee Filter Easter Eggs

Coffee Filter Snowflakes

Bleeding Tissue Easter Eggs

Super Easy Paper Baskets

What would you put in these cute little baskets? We made these paper baskets with some construction paper, liquid starch, and pipe cleaners. They could be May Baskets, Mother's Day, Teacher gifts or for Easter.

For these baskets you'll need:

Square paper of any size (we used 6"x6" and 9"x9")

Liquid Starch

Paint Brushes

Tin Cans

Rubber bands or Elastics 

Pipe Cleaners

Lay the square paper on some newspaper and brush the liquid starch over the paper.  Turn the paper over and do the other side too. 

Now put the wet starchy paper over a can.  I used a large stewed tomato can, but you could use some thing like a coffee can too. Place a rubber band around the paper like this.  Let the starch dry.

Then when the basket is dry, you can punch holes on the sides and twist pipe cleaners together to form the handle. Pretty simple!

Then place whatever you want in your basket.  Maybe natural items, trinkets, or coffee filter flowers like we did below.  To find out how we made the coffee filter flowers click here.

Our Coffee FIlter Flowers:

What kind of baskets have you made?

Bleeding Tissue Easter Eggs

This is is going to be an exciting week! My friend Rachelle from Tinkerlab and I have joined forces to give you 10 Egg Activities for Egg Week.  Monday through Friday we will both be posting a different egg activity so be sure to check out both places for some fun ideas. Today we have our Bleeding Tissue Easter Eggs to show you.  Here are a few of our beauties.  My daughter especially enjoyed this egg decorating activity.

For Bleeding Tissue Easter Eggs you'll need:

Bleeding Art Tissue

hard boiled white eggs

scissors

coffee filters or paper towels

spray bottle

newspaper

egg carton or baking cooling rack

To begin,  I cut up the bleeding art tissue in 3 different types of shapes: tiny squares, tiny strips, and a variety of shapes in one group.  My hope was that the different shapes would transfer to the egg.

Next,  lay down a paper towel or coffee filter and spray it with water.

Then sprinkle some bleeding tissue shapes on the wet coffee filter.

Then,  spray the top of the egg and sprinkle some bleeding tissue shapes on top of the egg.  I asked my daughter what she thought would happen?  She noticed the tissue already beginning to bleed so she guessed correctly.

We wrapped the egg in the coffee filter with the tissue paper to ultimately open the wrapped eggs like little presents.  C loved the whole procedure of this of spraying, sprinkling, and wrapping the eggs.

We rested the wrapped eggs in the egg carton, but you could put them on a baking rack too.  Who doesn't love surprises?

We let them dry for a half hour...we couldn't wait.  Perhaps the effect would be brighter if left to dry? Next time we'll try that.  I think they turned out wonderful.  I'm always a big fan of this sort of effect.  One egg has the tiny squares, another the mixture, and the last has the strips of tissue on it.  Pretty cool.

One close up view.

My intention was to use paper towels, but we didn't have many so I thought to use coffee filters.  In the back of my mind I was thinking that the bleeding tissue would transfer to the coffee filters too.  So now we have art on our eggs and coffee filters!

What do think about this process?

What should we make with these colorful coffee filters?

Hope you enjoyed this idea,  but I'm sure you'll enjoy TinkerLab's egg experiment too.  Be sure to stop on over to see what amazing idea Rachelle has to share here. Walking On Raw Eggs!

Tie Dye Coffee Filter Snowflakes

Join me over at PreK + K Sharing blog today and find out how we made these Tie Dye Coffee Filter Snowflakes  here.   PreK + Sharing is a collaborative blog consisting of many talented bloggers believing in: 1. Excellence in early childhood education.  2. Delight and appreciation for all things "ART" related.  and 3. A shared joy in child-centered, child-directed, and genuine play-based adventures.  Hope you check my post out here and all the other great posts by other bloggers! Didn't these Snowflakes turn out wonderful?

Coffee Filter Turkey Cards

This past weekend we made Thanksgiving cards with coffee filters, watercolor paints, and paper! I love using coffee filters for art because they are cheap and accessible!  We had quite an assembly line going and created over 20 or so cards!!! WOW!  C enjoyed making these turkey cards quite a bit!  We were inspired by Dilly Dali Art and their Spin Art Turkeys! They made Turkey Table Toppers.  Here is one of our finished cards.

First we painted coffee filters with watercolor paints.  Make sure to have newspaper underneath because they will soak through.

When the coffee filters are dry, cut them all in half like this.

Then glue the half of the coffee filter on a folded card or any paper if you don't want it to be a card.

Tear a piece of brown tissue paper (or construction paper) for the head.  We used two paper punch holes for the eyes and added black dots. You could use googly eyes too.

Now add a red piece of tissue paper for the wattle and a yellow triangle (and nostril holes) for the beak.

Finally, add lines for feathers and crumple brown tissue paper for the wings.  You could use real feathers too.  We drew the legs on and added grass for a background.  Simple and sweet! Very cute!

More cuteness!

They are adorable! Aren't they?  Don't you wish that you were receiving one?

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

This post is linked to: It's Playtime, Tip Toe Thru Tuesday, Thanksgiving Link-up

Tie Dye Coffee Filter Fall Leaves

I'm so ready for the Fall colors.... so we decided to bring some beauty to our window a little bit earlier!!!  We created Tie Dye Coffee Filter Fall Leaves!!!   We did these leaves very much the same way as our Tie Dye Coffee Filter Easter Eggs.  All you need for this project are some coffee filters, water based markers in Fall colors (the ones that work the best are: Mr. Sketch Markers ), scissors, newspaper, water, and Metallic Markers.

First, create a simple leaf shape on your coffee filter.  To create variety,  I created some different sizes of leaves too.  Cut out the leaf and place it on layers of newspaper so the markers or water won't soak through to your table!

Now color the leaf shape with water based Fall color markers like brown , red, orange,  and yellow.  We made patches of colors rather than just one color.  You can leave a little white showing.

Here is an example of one leaf that C did.  Some were colored with smaller patches of color too.

After coloring,  make sure the leaf is placed on the layers of newspaper and spray with a mist over the leaf to make the colors run.  Don't put too much water or the colors will fade away too much! (C loves this process!)

After done spraying,  let the leaves dry for a few hours.  We let them dry over night.  

After the leaves were dry,  we used metallic markers to add veins to our leaves. Adding the veins gave the leaves  a finishing touch that they needed!

Here are our leaves again.  They make great sun catchers too! 

Happy Fall!

This post is shared with: It's Playtime, The Play Academy, Come Together Fall Fun,             Thanksgiving Link-up