These coffee filter bats are such an awesome craft for Halloween! Each one is dark, spooky and completely unique! It’s a great little science experiment to show how colours can mix and bleed together. Not to mention that they look surprisingly beautiful when they’re done! My kids wanted to make dozens of these bats and hang them on the walls as Halloween decorations. Wouldn’t that look amazing!?
Earlier this summer, my 6 year old and I were making Coffee Filter Butterflies. My daughter thought it would be fun to completely cover her coffee filter with marker. When she dripped water on her coffee filter, we were surprised to see that the bright colours disappeared and the coffee filter had turned a mix of black and dark blue, with just a few hints of pink. It was surprisingly beautiful! Not really very butterfly-like, but absolutely PERFECT for a bat craft! My daughter is very proud to have inspired this craft!
I like this coffee filter bat craft because you only need one coffee filter per bat, and you only have to colour half of the coffee filter, so it’s much quicker. I do recommend sticking with darker marker colours to get dark bat-like colours, but experiment with it! Kids put together awesome combinations, and sometimes it surprises me how perfect they turn out!
If you don’t have coffee filters or if you don’t feel like waiting for the coffee filters to dry, feel free to make your bats with black construction paper, or even black tissue paper. I made a free printable bat wing template over at my post for Wooden Spoon Bats if you need one. Just cut it out and trace it onto black paper or construction paper.
I found the black rhinestones at the dollar store, so check there first. If you have trouble finding them, feel free to paint the clothespins, colour them with marker, or cover them in glitter glue. You could even attach black pom poms or black buttons to the clothespin to make it more bat-like. There’s lots of options if you need to switch things up a bit.
How to Make Coffee Filter Bats
Here’s what you’ll need. The affiliate links below will take you to products on Amazon that are similar to the ones I used for this craft:
- Coffee Filters
- Mr. Sketch Markers
- Black Rhinestones (10mm)
- Clothespin
- Small Googly Eyes (5mm size)
- Scissors
- Crafter’s Tape
If you don’t have Mr. Sketch markers, by all means, give it a try with washable Crayola markers (and let me know in the comments how they look!). It should definitely work, but I’ve never tried making dark colours like this with Crayola, so I’m not sure exactly how dark you can get them? But if you want to do this craft and that’s all you have at home, then give it a go!
I used small coffee filters for these coffee filter bats. The coffee filters are meant for smaller, 4 to 6 cup coffee machines, like the ones they have in hotels. They should be readily available wherever coffee filters are sold – even the dollar store has them.
You only need ONE coffee filter for each bat. (The Coffee Filter Butterflies we made needed two coffee filters, so I’m just clarifying).
Fold the coffee filter in half. I recommend giving your child a cookie sheet, and letting them do all the colouring on the cookie sheet. It really helps keep the mess contained and makes clean up a breeze!
Then colour the coffee filters so that they are almost completely covered. The more you colour the coffee filter (as in the less white space you leave), the darker it will look when it’s done.
I stuck to the darker marker colours – Purple, dark green, red, black and blues for mine.
Use an eye dropper to carefully drip water onto the coffee filter.
Make sure you add enough water so that the coffee filters are completely wet. But not so much that it’s sitting in a giant pool of water.
Also, try not to squirt the water too aggressively onto the coffee filters. Do you see the light spot in the middle of the coffee filter on the bottom right in the photo below? That was because I squirted water really hard in that spot and it rinsed all the colours away in that area. So just drip the water gently. Feel free to use a small measuring spoon if you don’t have an eye dropper.
It was an unusually hot 30C (86F), sunny day when I made these coffee filter bats. So I took them outside into the sun to let the coffee filters dry. It only takes about half an hour for them to dry in hot sunny weather. Just be careful – you’ll know they’re done when they blow away! So make sure you keep an eye on them so you don’t lose them. 🙂
If it’s cold or rainy where you are and drying them in the sun isn’t an option, you’ll have to let these dry overnight indoors.
Once the coffee filter is completely dry, fold it in half again, as in the photo below.
Cut out little curves along the edge of the coffee filter, as shown in the photo below.
Unfold the coffee filter and you’ll have a symmetrical bat shape!
Each coffee filter makes one bat. I’m showing two coffee filters in the photos because I wanted to make two bats. Hopefully that isn’t confusing!
Sticker rhinestones are my new favourite craft supply. They are so much fun! My local dollar store always carries them in all sorts of shapes and sizes. I grabbed these awesome black ones for Halloween in two different sizes – 10mm and 12mm.
Carefully peel them off and stick them to the clothespin. If yours aren’t self adhesive, attach them to the clothespin with white glue or crafter’s tape.
Then use crafter’s tape to attach two small (5mm) googly eyes to the rhinestone on the end.
Pinch the coffee filter in the middle to get it ready to put into the clothespin.
Pinch open the clothespin and slide in the coffee filter.
Shape the wings as needed to make them look bat like.
And your coffee filter bats are done!
Aren’t they fun for Halloween!?
They’d look great hung up on the wall or window!
These coffee filter bats are such a cool Halloween craft for kids! They’d make a great Halloween decoration if you hang them on the wall or window. They’re a fun and simple craft to make and they look awesome with the black rhinestones!
If you’re looking for more fun Halloween bat crafts, check out our Wooden Spoon Bats. I love how easy these are to make and how fun you can make them when you use bright colours!
You can see our original post for making Classic Coffee Filter Butterflies here. These are so beautiful and so much fun to make!
Pssssst… Don’t forget to check out our new book Low-Mess Crafts for Kids for 72 fun and simple craft ideas for kids! It makes a great gift for the holidays!
Source : onelittleproject.com
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