How to Make Coffee Filter Butterflies

If you care for someone with special needs, it’s handy to have arts and crafts activities that work for their specific intellectual or developmental disability. There are a variety of arts and crafts activities that help with imagination, motor skills, mobility, confidence, and overall wellbeing. 

As we tend to work in groups at Stephen’s Place, our DIY craft activities are designed to work with all skill levels. We also choose activities that are adaptable to many intellectual or developmental disabilities. 

We tried making coffee filter butterflies, and we absolutely loved it! Watching the colors spread across the coffee filter could be an activity all on its own.

You’ll need (per butterfly):

• 2x Coffee filters (the type that looks like large cupcake baking cups)
• Washable markers
• An eye dropper or small spoon
• 1 pipe cleaner (12″ long)
• Cookie sheet or tray
• Water

Image: onelittleproject.com/

Instructions:

1. Start by placing one coffee filter inside of the other on a cookie sheet or tray.
   
2. Once you have one inside the other, flatten the coffee filters as much as possible (they don’t need to be poker-straight, just flat enough to easily draw on).
   
3. Using the marker pens, add dots, patterns, random splotches, or anything you like to the top coffee filter, keeping the bottom coffee filter in place as well. The more pigment, the merrier; any design that you make on the top filter will bleed through to the bottom filter.
   
4. Take your eye dropper or spoon and add droplets of water over your design. If you drop the wanted in the middle of a section of color, the outcome will be slightly different than if you dropped the water in an area with less marker. Either way works–experiment at will! It’s ok for your coffee filter to be fully saturated, but try not to drown it.
   
5. Leave your coffee filters to dry (or use a hairdryer to cheat).
   
6. Once your coffee filters are fully dry, gently pull them apart.
   
7. Next, act as if you’re making a fan out of a piece of paper. Fold the coffee filters so that they have ½” pleats. You should end up with two ½”(ish) sized folded strips.
8. Put your two folded strips together.

9. Wrap the middle of the pipe cleaner around the middle of the two strips, and twist again to secure the pipe cleaner onto the strips.
   
10. Pull the two pipe cleaner ends to the same side to make a “V”.
    
11. If you want curly butterfly antennas, you can curl the ends of the pipe cleaner.
    
12. Next, pull apart the folds in the coffee filter to open them up and make your butterfly.
    
13. And done!

Check below for some of our other crafts!

Stephen's Place Assisted Living for Adults with Special Needs in Vancouver, Washington

About Stephen’s Place

Stephen’s Place is an independent apartment community for adults with developmental and intellectual disabilities, located in Vancouver, WA (7 minutes from Portland, OR).

If you have a loved one with developmental or intellectual disabilities, who is looking for a community to live in, please contact us for more information. 

Stephen’s Place is a private-pay apartment community due to our state-of-the-art amenities and programs. We are a nonprofit and do not profit from our community. We are private pay because we spend more than some housing communities to ensure that our residents are comfortable and can safely live their lives with independence and dignity.