Water Color Art With Coffee Filter

3 Materials
$10
1 Hour
Easy
Hello my fellow DIYn beauties! I have quite the treat for you today! I am going to show you how to make a beautiful piece of art for your home using a coffee filter! This DIY is fun, easy and inexpensive to do, and when you are done you will have a beautiful piece of watercolor art that you will be dying to hang up ASAP!
I went down to my craft room and saw the pile of coffee filters that I had bought months ago. I was touring the dollar store and picked them up because I had seen a lot of cool DIY ideas on Pinterest involving coffee filters. I hadn’t even opened the package yet and thought tonight was a good as night as ever to do something. I have wanted to do a water color piece for a long time now, and I thought what better way to do a water color than with a coffee filter? So here we go!
Materials


-Canvas


-Coffee filters


-Markers


-Rubbing alcohol


-Paintbrush
Flatten out your coffee filter and start coloring! Really get creative with this part. Use whatever and however many colors you like. Draw any type of pattern you like, too! Have fun!
This is what I came up with. Lay your colored coffee filter on your canvas
Pour some rubbing alcohol in a dish and then start to paint the rubbing alcohol over your coffee filter. You want to saturate the coffee filter enough so that they ink from the marker runs through to the canvas. The markers that I used were Spectrum Noir. They are alcohol based markers and they are my favorite! I got them from a craft store that was going out of business so I got them at a steal, too!
I used my scraping tool that I use when I am applying vinyl, to smooth over the coffee filter. This also helps the colors to bleed into the canvas nicely.
I applied the coffee filter in other spots on the canvas and repeated the brushing of the rubbing alcohol. When I removed the coffee filter, this is what I had.
The colors weren’t as bright as I hoped, so I made another coffee filter.
Then I repeated the same steps over top of what I already had.
Much better!
You can get your kids involved, too! My daughter LOVED doing this!
I put the quotes on by cutting out vinyl with my Cricut. If you don’t have a Cricut, you could buy vinyl letters from a craft or dollar store. You could also use a stencil and paint, or free hand paint something. This is the beauty of DIY — there are no rules. So get creative!
Love my new artwork!!
Let me know what you come up with!! Head over to my blog to check out the full post, which is full of lost of great tips and tricks! :)
Suggested materials:
  • White canvas   (Dollarama)
  • Rubbing alcohol   (Shoppers Drug Mart)
  • Coffee filters   (Dollarama)
Holly Grace
Want more details about this and other DIY projects? Check out my blog post!
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Frequently asked questions
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3 of 4 questions
  • Janey Janey on Mar 08, 2017

    can you use this technique on cloth?

  • Luc6284654 Luc6284654 on Sep 24, 2017

    what other markers could be used?


  • Connie Connie on Dec 20, 2018

    IS there something else instead of those markers? Prisma color pencils, water color, permanent colored markers

    etc. I love what you have done. Don't know if I can invest that much. I really want to do this. Connie ( Artist )

Comments
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  • Kathy Kathy on Jan 28, 2021

    Going to try this activity with my grandsons next time they visit, they love to paint ❤️❤️ Well except the 2 year old, when Nana tried to paint his hand to get his handprint and all he{} broke out 😂😂😂 we had paint everywhere except on the valentine canvas we were doing for his mom🤦🏼‍♀️🤷🏼‍♀️😫😫

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