Dryer Sheet Flowers DIY: Shabby Style

Today we’re making Dryer Sheet Flowers in a shabby style! This is an easy tutorial, and I’ve included all of the steps with tons of pictures in this post to guide you along!

These flowers, once transformed, look like they’re made out of tulle or a very sheer fabric!

Overview:

It all starts with used dryer sheets, which is a great reason to do the laundry. “Honey, I need to do laundry so I can craft!” The dryer sheets will be tea-stained first. After making them into flower shapes, I’ll dye the dryer sheets with spray ink dyes and add some glimmery goodness. After I dry the flowers with a heat tool, I’ll have lovely shabby-style flowers!

Supplies:

Dryer Sheets (used)

Wire twisty-ties (like what keeps your bread bags closed)

Scissors

Rubber Gloves

Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist in pumpkin spice (orange) and dragonfly (aqua/teal)

Perfect Pearls Mists in heirloom gold and perfect pearl

Tutorial:

1. Do some laundry. Yes, now laundry becomes fun, doesn’t it? You have a purpose beyond simply insuring there are clean clothes. Now you are beginning to hoard to start your collection of used dryer sheets.

2. Make two cups of tea. The first cup is for tea-staining (I think I just made that a verb?) the dryer sheets. The second cup of tea is for you to enjoy. (After all that laundry, you deserve it, right?

3. Dye the dryer sheets with the tea. Once the tea has steeped for 5 minutes (to get the color nice and rich), remove the tea bag. Place the used dryer sheets into the tea bath and use a spoon to make sure they are immersed into the tea. (I’m using a giant mug that doubles as a soup bowl, but you can’t really tell from these pictures. And yes, I drink my tea out of a giant mug because I need all the help caffeine I can get!)

4. Let the dryer sheets sit in the tea bath for about 10 minutes. Keep in mind that these sheets are delicate, so use a spoon to gently lift them out of the tea bath one at a time. Place each one on a paper towel to dry.

You’ll notice how textured the dryer sheets now look, with the tea staining some parts more than others. For a truly shabby look, you could use this (the tea stain) as your finished color of the flowers. So many decorating possibilities!

5. Once completely dry, this is what your pile of dryer sheets should look like:

6. Fold the dryer sheets as follows: Take three dryer sheets, place them on top of each other as lined up as you can make them, and begin folding them back-and-forth in an accordion type of fold.

7. Once folded, pinch the center. Wrap a wire twisty-tie (what are these things officially called?!) around the center and twist the ends of the wire together. This is what your flowers should look like at this stage:

8. Gently pull the layers apart, shaping the cinched-together dryer sheets into more of a flower shape.

You should have three layers on each side of the flower, a top layer, a middle layer, and a bottom layer. This is what the flowers should look like after you pull the layers apart:

9. Read this entire step first before proceeding so nothing gets messed up.

Next, you need to cut some slits into each layer of the flower using scissors. Each slit needs to only extend approximately half-way down toward the center of the flower. I alternate between making 2 slits and making 3 slits per layer, as it makes the flower fuller. Start with the bottom layer, and cut your slits “sort of” evenly spaced apart. You don’t need to be exact with your spacing, just eyeball it.

10. Take another wire twisty-tie and attach it to the flower’s twisty-tie. This makes a longer stem for you to hold while you are dying the flowers.

Note: I use rubber gloves when I do this next step, as the dye stains pretty effectively. (And that’s what you want in a dye, so I view it as a good thing!) But no worries, if you get dye on your hands, use a baby wipe to get most of it off. The rest will come off in the shower easily. You can also wash your hands repeatedly like a woman possessed. Ask me how I know!

11. Holding the flower by its twisty-tie stem, spray the dye ink all over the flower. I did this outside, but you can also use a box to spray “into” to avoid getting any overspray on your surroundings indoors. I sprayed several light coats onto each flower. There’s no right or wrong way to do this, just spray until you’re happy with the colors.

Here’s an action shot (hah!) of me spraying the orange dye:

And here’s an action shot of me spraying the teal dye:

12. Dry each flower with a heat tool, which also sets the dye in each flower. What is fun about the heat tool, is that it will curl the flower “petals” a bit so that right before your eyes your flower starts looking like a real flower blossom.

Keep your heat tool constantly moving so that you don’t singe or burn the dryer sheets. This step is trial-and-error, and after you do just one flower you will have the hang of it. If you accidentally singe or burn part of the flower, you can simply cut that off. But I like that look, I think it adds to the shabby-style, so I always keep my singed edges. In fact, I singe parts of my flowers on purpose.

13. Repeat the heat tool step for each flower. I actually spend quite some time on this step, repeatedly picking up each flower and “heating” several times. Again, you will know when you’re finished with this step: it is as simple as stopping when you like how it looks.Here’s the flowers dried and curled:

You could stop there and have beautifully dyed flowers!

14. Use your hands to continue crinkling, teasing, fluffing and arranging the petals until you love how they look.

Several of these dyed flowers in a vase are a stunning focal point in a room.

Optional step: I embellished my flowers a bit more by spraying Perfect Pearls Mists in both “heirloom gold” and “perfect pearl” onto various sections of each flower. These mists are fantastic for giving either a soft and pretty sheen (using a few light sprays) or adding lots of shiny shimmer (using several coats close up). I just gave a few light spritzes onto each flower. And I played with the heat tool a bit more, just to make the flowers even shabbier in style.

Here’s our grapevine wreath on the inside of our front door, now with the flowers attached. I simply used the twisty-tie stems to attach each flower to the wreath.

Here’s a closer look:

When my husband saw me tea-staining the dryer sheets, I jokingly mentioned how it makes me love doing laundry knowing I can use the dryer sheets to make flowers.

His response? “Is there any type of craft that would make you want to use the vacuum more often?”

Hah!

Happy crafting!

~Laura

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Comments

Brooke Bock says

July 21, 2014 at 7:58 am

These are adorable and so easy…I actually have jars of used dryer sheets…some dyed already, some just white waiting for the perfect project…This may be it. Thank you!

And let me know if you do come up with something that inspires vacuuming…

Best Wishes…

Brooke

- Laura / Pet Scribbles says
  
  July 26, 2014 at 7:19 pm
  
  Ooohhhh Brooke – I would LOVE to see your dyed dryer sheets, especially as you have jars of them! How lucky you are! 🙂 Please share a picture if you make some – I’d LOVE to see!
  
  (And no, so far I’ve had NO luck on any way to inspire vacuuming!)
  Laura / Pet Scribbles recently posted…Polka Dot Tissue Paper Flowers (big!)
  
Eileen says

October 13, 2014 at 11:00 am

Love this idea!!! What kind of ink dye did you use? Does food coloring work?

Laura / Pet Scribbles says

October 17, 2014 at 7:18 am

Thanks Eileen! The spray inks I used to dye the flowers are by Tattered Angels. If you scroll back up to the supplies list in my post, you’ll see the complete name – click on that to be taken to their website where you can find more information. You can find these types of inks at most major craft stores. I’m not sure if food coloring will work, as I’ve never tried it. 🙂
Laura / Pet Scribbles recently posted…Fall Decor: Pumpkin Cookie Cutter Garland

Ren Taylor says

May 23, 2015 at 8:59 am

I’ve used batting and vacuum dust bunnies to line my small grapevine bird nests, plus the real birds appreciate the soft bunnies to add to their real nests.