How to make rainbow baby's breath using fresh baby's breath and food coloring to dye the flowers and create your own rainbow!
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Why We Love This Project
- The rainbow baby's breath is so beautiful!
- It's easy to make.
- You only need regular food coloring and baby's breath for this project.
Video
I wanted to use some rainbow baby's breath on a special Easter table as a centerpiece, and decided to try and make my own. I used simple food coloring and fresh flowers and got great results.
Different Methods of Dying Baby's Breath
There are a few popular methods for creating rainbow baby's breath. If you purchase it from a local florist, or somewhere like trader joe, it is usually created with a special florists spray paint. The florist spray paint is expensive and hard to find.
Some DIY's like to make it using regular spray paint. This works best for dried baby's breath, but you can do it on fresh as well. This method works well, and you can easily control the exact shade of the color by choosing spray paint in bright or pastel colors, whichever you prefer. The draw back to this method, is again that it's expensive to purchase all six colors for a rainbow.
We decided to try the food coloring method.
For this method you cut fresh baby's breath, and put the stems in food coloring mixed with some water. The flower stems drink the water and the color goes up the stem and into the white flowers to make them change color.
Materials
For this project you need:
- Fresh baby's breath
- Food coloring
- Water
- Six Glasses
How To Dye Baby's Breath
1. Begin by mixing about ½ cup of water in each glass. Then add about 1 teaspoon of food coloring in each of the six rainbow colors to create a different color in each glass. To create orange, mix half yellow and half red. To create purple mix half red and half blue.
2. Give each stem of a baby's breath a fresh cut and place in the colored water.
3. If some stems don't absorb the color after a few hours or overnight, recut the stem and place it in the colored water again. There's no specific time to leave the flowers. Some of the flowers changed color within a few hours, some need to stay in the colored water overnight.
4. Once the desired color intensity is reached, remove the stem from the colored water and place it in regular clear water, and arrange as desired, or dry them to use as dried flowers. The pigmentation of the flowers will vary depending on how much food coloring you use, and how long you let the flowers stay in the colored water. You can also adjust the color palette by using different shades of dye.
Tips:
Use the freshest flowers possible. The freshest flowers take the color the fastest. Also when your making your selection of flowers, look for the most open, largest blooms, since they'll show the color the best.
Also be sure to work very gently with the baby's breath. The flowers often become tangled together, and when you are pulling them apart you may lose flowers, or worse, kink the stem. If the stem is kinked then it won't be able to draw the colored water up the stem to dye the flower.
How Long Does It Take?
Here's how the flowers looked after about 3 hours in the dye:
And here's the flowers after we left them overnight in the food coloring dye:
The green and blue dye started to show up on the flowers within only an hour or two. After overnight we did find that blue and green were quite dark, so we removed them from the dye and put them in water so that they didn't become darker. The pink, orange, and purple took the longest for us. We had them in the dye for about 18 hours.
Rainbow Table Centerpiece
We used these flowers in small bunches in rainbow order as one of the focal points for our rainbow Easter table. These beautiful flowers were perfect, and went wonderfully with the rest of my tablescape. And after Easter, we can dry the flowers and use them in other floral designs or crafts. These would be lovely used in flower clouds. I've used all the colors separately, but you could combine them for a beautiful bouquet arrangement.
Equipment
- scissors or garden clippers or a sharp knife
Materials
- fresh baby's breath
- food coloring in blue red, yellow, and green
- six glasses
- water
Instructions
- Begin by mixing about ½ cup of water in each glass. Then add about 1 teaspoon of food coloring in each of the six rainbow colors to create a different color in each glass. To create orange, mix half yellow and half red. To create purple mix half red and half blue.
- Give each stem of a baby's breath a fresh cut and place in the colored water.
- If some stems don't absorb the color after a few hours or over night, recut the stem and place it in the colored water again. There's no specific time to leave the flowers. Some of the flowers changed color within a few hours, some need to stay in the colored water overnight.
- Once the desired color intensity is reached, remove the stem from the colored water and place it in regular clear water, and arrange as desired, or dry them to use as dried flowers. The pigmentation of the flowers will vary depending on how much food coloring you use, and how long you let the flowers stay in the colored water. You can also adjust the color palette by using different shades of dye.
These would be perfect for a rainbow party, art party theme, St. Patrick's Day, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, or any celebration. Use them as decorations or as floral gifts for a special occasion or as an anniversary gift.
With knowing how to make rainbow baby's breath, life really is a party!
More Rainbow Inspiration
Frequently Asked Questions
We saw some change after just a few hours, but for most of our flowers we left them in the dye for about 18 hours.
I used regular liquid food coloring for mine. I haven't tried it with gel food coloring. If you do try it, please let me know in the comments below how well it worked.
The flowers change color as the stems drinks up the colored water. If your flowers are older, they may not drink up the water, and change color as well as fresh baby's breath does.
If you try our tutorial on How To Make Your Own Rainbow Baby's Breath or any other ideas on the blog please let me know how it went in the comments below. Thanks for visiting today!
Dannyelle says
Hi Jay, I'm in Canada so it might be slightly different. I just used the inexpensive liquid ones from the grocery store. I suspect that the issue is more likely with the flowers themselves than the food colourings. For the process to work the flowers need to be fresh enough to take up the water, if that makes sense? Do make sure that you give all the stems a good fresh cut with a sharp knife before putting them in the coloured water. I had better success with some than others initially, but did find that after I left them all overnight, they all worked pretty well. Sorry if that doesn't help too much. Hopefully with a little more time it will work for you.
Dannyelle
Jey says
Hi,
What foods colourings did you used?
I bought from Asda and Morrisons and it has no color change effect.