Do you love flowers as much as me? Y’all, I am obsessed with flowers! I remember growing up and picking all the wild flowers in our yard followed by pressing them in the pages of my books. They are such a beautiful way to make anyone smile. Here is how we are preserving our pressed flowers as a gift, perfect for Mother’s Day!
Flowers can have so much significance.
Even though flowers can be bought easily at an grocery store, their significance is never lowered. They are even more special when they are obtained from an important person or occasion in our lives. My husband’s grandmother passed away 3 weeks from this coming up Saturday. It is still so hard to even thing about her passing, even though we knew it would be coming sooner than we all wanted.
My oldest grabbed a few flowers from the beautiful flower arrangement that sat on top of her casket. As soon as we got home, we placed them in water. It wouldn’t be long before they would wither away. I did not want to lose those flowers. So I quickly thought of what I could do to preserve them from home.
Flower pressing.
Drying or pressing/drying was my two options of preserving these flowers. Hanging them upside down was one method I knew of very well, but it does come with the issue of the flowers being very fragile. One bump and I could lose all the petals on these flowers. Pressing them in a book is another method I grew up using, but I didn’t want the flowers to look too dried out. Book pressing would cause them to lose some of their coloring.
Then it was off to researching on what the best way was for preserving these flowers by pressing/drying them out. The best methods I found were to dry the flowers out by taking out all of the water quickly, aka by heat. Microwave pressing was one method I found, but I did not have the special wood fire bricks for that process. So it was onto trying to use what I did have and that is an iron.
Pressing/drying flowers with an iron.
This method seemed to work pretty well. I waited to write this post after I had completed this method to make sure it was a success first. Now, it did take more time with the larger flower bud. Overall, it worked fairly well! All you need for this method is an iron, paper towels and your flowers. Trim off anything that you don’t want preserved, like a long flower stem.
Place the flowers on 2 paper towels (the paper towels are for observing the moisture from the flowers) and make sure not to overlap them. Next, place 2 more paper towels on top. The iron should be set on low-medium heat and no steam should be coming from the iron. The point of this method is to remove moisture not add it.
Gently place the iron on the paper towels on top of the flowers. Allow it to sit for about 15 seconds, and pick up. Repeat this process for about a minute, or until you believe the flowers are drying. As I mentioned above, carnations or any flower with a large bloom will take longer to remove the moisture. Think of this process like you are pressing a vinyl image onto a t-shirt. You do so carefully and without moving the iron too much to mess up the vinyl iron-on image.
Once I was done ‘ironing’ the flowers, I placed them inside of a book while they were still sandwiched between the paper towels. I let them sit and be pressed overnight. Now to creating that laminated gift!
Creating a laminated pressed flower gift.
Alright, I tried out 2 different methods for laminating the pressed flowers: a self sealing laminating paper and basic laminating paper. Both turned out great, but if you have a large flower bloom, the laminator will have issues pressing it due to the thickness. I also am thinking about placing a sheet of card stock behind the pressed flowers next time!
Before laminating the pressed flowers, you need to decide on the layout. Once you laminate, there is no going back. We now have 2 different laminated pressed flowers that will remind us of Maw Maw Nonie. I can’t wait to gift one of these to my mother in-law who did not grab the flowers for herself.
So what else can these laminated pressed flowers be used for? I am glad you asked 😉 You can trim the excess laminated paper (after laminating of course) and create a bookmark. Another idea would be to frame them! So many different ways you can gift these beautiful flowers!
Now my kids are on a mission to pick all the wild flowers they can to create bookmarks for themselves and others. Have you ever tried to press flowers and create gifts?
Another fun craft/gift idea: https://thesoutherlymagnolia.com/diy-paint-designed-tea-towels/
Sending lots of virtual hugs!
