Rainbow and Glitter Roses for the Holidays

Get ready to get completely crafty with a glitter rainbow flower DIY! The holiday season is the perfect time to deck your halls with festive colors, and you'll really get into the spirit with these rainbow flowers. Forget about the classic red rose. We've got an artsy alternative tutorial that is an instant wishlist hit.

The weather is chilling, Santa is prepping his sleigh and you're searching for the perfect handmade gift. Even though our DIY focuses on the fall and winter (we're talking about the Thanksgiving through New Year's time), you can use this easy-to-follow tutorial as a wedding flower how-to, to create rainbow-licious boutonnieres, for Mother's Day, as a honey of a gift for your honey on Valentine's Day and more.

So go ahead and dye these roses in any combo of colors to match the occasion to create the perfect centerpieces, bouquets or gifts. And why not toss in a little glitter to make the holidays really sparkle!

Start with white roses, as they dye better than red roses. Cut the roses, leaving about 9 inches of stem. Remove all the leaves from the stems. If you're looking for flowers on more of a sale price level, swap out your white roses for carnation flower bouquets. You can also experiment with other white flowers, and swap out a rose for an orchid or a few tulips.

Fill four glasses with water. In each glass, add drops of different food coloring, stirring with a plastic spoon. Add food coloring until the water is practically opaque. Blue and green dyes turn the water opaque very quickly, while it takes a little more for red and yellow dyes.

Using a craft knife, carefully cut down the middle of the stem, making an incision of about 4 to 5 inches. It helps to cut on a cutting mat to protect your work surface.

Use the knife again to divide the stem halves so you have four stem sections. However, if your rose has a skinny stem, you will not be able to cut it into quarters. Just leave it with two halves.

Place the stem sections into the different glasses of food coloring. You can dye multiple roses at a time by tying them together with a twist tie to keep the roses standing up straight. For your roses with skinny stems cut into halves, place the stems in two colors rather than four. Two colors are actually ideal for most holidays, e.g., red and green for Christmas.

Let the rose stems sit in the food coloring for at least 24 hours, and ideally 48 hours. You will see that colors interact differently with the roses. Some colors become completely absorbed in the petals, while others only tint the tips of the petals. Part of the fun of this project is experimenting. You can even try a bicolor design with more than one hue.

Use floral tape, available at most crafts stores, to tape the stem sections back together.

The rainbow roses already look beautiful, but to make them really sparkle for the holidays, embellish them with glitter. In a plastic cup, mix 1 part white glue with 4 parts water so that the glue mixture has the consistency of milk. Then dip the tips of each rose in the glue. Blot the rose on a paper towel to remove excess glue.

Now, create each glitter rainbow flower. Pour some glitter on a paper plate. Dip the rose in the glitter, turning the rose to cover all the edges.

These autumn-hued roses, dyed with orange and purple food coloring, are perfect for a Thanksgiving arrangement. The orange was created by combining red and yellow, and the purple was created by combining red and blue.

With the addition of some gold glitter, these roses are a feast for the eyes.

Create Christmas blooms by soaking rose stem halves in red and green food coloring. They look like Christmas candy.

With a little red and green glitter, these roses are even more festive. Get matchy-matchy! The color of the glitter is the ultimate combo with the rose's hue.

Blue food coloring does not saturate the petals. So, for these blue and white Hanukkah roses, we just inserted the entire stem in blue food coloring, knowing that much of the petals would remain white.

Adding silver and blue glitter to the roses makes these flowers perfect for a Hanukkah celebration.

DIY a bouquet of black and white tuxedo roses by placing one half of the stem in black food coloring, and the other half in regular water.

Dip the black and white roses in silver glitter, and you'll be ringing in the new year with style.

Looking for more holiday rainbow rose flowers? Let your inner crafter out and experiment with all the food coloring hues you can find! And don't worry about sticking with a traditional silver or gold metallic glitter. Soak up the sparkle and sprinkle on rainbow, opal or an Oz-inspired emerald hue.