How To Make Green Roses For St. Patrick’s Day

Did you ever experiment with coloring flowers using food dye when you were a kid? It’s really cool and a lot of fun, so when I saw white roses at the grocery store the other day I knew exactly what to do with them: I made them into green roses for St. Patrick’s Day!

How to make green roses for St. Patrick's Day! All you need is food coloring!

These roses are simple to make, and though these ones are green for St. Patrick’s Day, you can make them in any color you want for any holiday!

How To Make Green Roses For St. Patrick’s Day

It will take a few days for the flowers to soak up enough color, so make sure you give yourself a few extra days!

Here’s what you need for these roses:

  • white roses
  • green food coloring
  • scissors
  • gold glitter
  • spray adhesive


The first step is to dye the roses. Add about ten drops of green food coloring to a small cup of water and mix it well.

Give the roses a fresh cut on the diagonal, and then put them in the cup of green water.

Green and gold St. Patrick's Day roses-6

If your roses won’t stand up by themselves in your cup of water, just put the cup inside of a cardboard box and let the roses lean against the box to support their weight.

Green and gold St. Patrick's Day roses-7

Leave the roses in the green water for a few days until they soak up enough color.

If you want your roses more brightly colored, cut the stems short before you put them in the water. The shorter the stem, the faster the roses will soak up the color.

Also, you can add more food coloring to your water to get a brighter colored rose. You won’t be able to see the difference in the color of the water when you add more food coloring, but the roses will be more vibrant because they will get proportionally more dye as they soak up the water.

For roses like these ones (green tinged, but not fully green), I put about ten drops of food coloring in 8 oz of water and left the roses in the water for 2-3 days.

NOTE: Some flowers soak up dye better than others. Daisies soak up dye really quickly while roses are slower; if you want bright, bold colors in your flowers you might try dying daisies instead of roses.

Once your roses are fully colored, it’s time to add glitter! Pour out a bit of glitter onto a paper plate, then spray the head of the rose with a light dusting of spray adhesive. Gently dab the rose into the glitter on the plate so that just the tips of the petals are covered in glitter.

Green and gold St. Patrick's Day roses-9

Spray each rose and dip them into glitter, and once all your roses are glittered, you’re done!

How to make green roses for St. Patrick's Day! All you need is food coloring!

How to make green roses for St. Patrick's Day! All you need is food coloring!

Want to share this tutorial with your friends? Just click any of the share buttons on the left to share with Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, etc.!

P.S. if you liked this project, check out these other simple St. Patrick’s Day crafts!

Signature

Jessi Wohlwend

I believe that anyone can do crafts and DIY projects, regardless of skill or experience. I love sharing simple craft ideas, step by step DIY project tutorials, cleaning hacks, and other tips and tricks all with one goal in mind: giving you the tools you need to “do it yourself”, complete fun projects, and make awesome things!

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Reader Interactions

  1. kristin says

    6 years ago

    I had no ideas about this trick! I’m going to try it next time I buy white roses 🙂

  2. Sarah Harrison says

    9 years ago

    Don’t you think you are harming the poor little roses?? Maybe you can use artificial flowers. I made my roses out of tissue paper!!

    • Jessi Wohlwend says

      9 years ago

      You can definitely make them out of tissue paper if you want! I don’t think food coloring harms flowers, and especially since these were already cut off the vine, you know they won’t last too much longer anyway. These roses certainly lived in a vase of water just like any other store bought roses, the water just so happened to be green and festive!

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