My son and I really love coffee filter crafts. After the success of our Coffee Filter Leaves craft, we decided to make bats. Our coffee filter bat craft turned out awesome! We experimented with colors and liked the way the purple, blue, and black markers looked together.
Supplies Needed:
-coffee filters
-markers (NOT permanent)
–paint and paintbrush
-scissors
-spray bottle filled with water
-OPTIONAL: googly eyes, glitter glue, or metallic sharpie to make eyes
How to Make Coffee Filter Bats:
Clothespins:
First paint your clothespins. We painted ours purple and black. I like to use Crayola Washable Paints; they are easy to wash off. Begin by painting one side of the clothespins. Let them dry. Later, you can paint the other side while your coffee filters are drying.
Coffee Filters:
Color your coffee filter with markers. It is important to use markers that easily wash off of surfaces because the color will bleed through the coffee filter. Don’t worry about how your coffee filter looks. The colors will run together after your spray it with water and any design you had will be gone.
Now it is time to spray the coffee filters! This is my son’s favorite part. Once you begin spraying the coffee filters with water, the color will immediately bleed onto your surface. We chose to spray ours on the grass. If you don’t have an outdoor area that you can make a mess on, then make sure that whatever surface you are using is cleanable. You can also put wax paper under your coffee filters to catch the run off liquid. We learned that the more water your spray, the less vivid the colors are. Experiment with lightly versus heavily spraying your coffee filters and see which way you like best.
We left our coffee filters on the grass to dry in the sun. They dried in about 20 minutes (it was a warm afternoon). They will take longer to dry if they are on wax paper.
Now, to make them look like bat wings you have to fold the coffee filter in half. I trimmed semi circles along the edges of the coffee filters, which gave them a bat-wing look.
Keep the folded side at the top. In the middle of the coffee filters, pinch the coffee filters (from top to bottom) to tuck them into the snap-end of the clothespins. Now you have bats!
We didn’t have any googly eyes small enough to fit on the clothespins. My son and I used silver glitter glue to make eyes on a couple of our bats. We gave one a smile too! Experiment with metallic sharpies, glitter glue, and googly eyes to see which you like the best for your coffee filter bat crafts.
More Bat Fun!
Check out my book recommendations for great bat books to read after you make this craft.
Bat I Spy: count how many of each bat you see.
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