learn how to press flowers

I’m lucky that my boyfriend regularly buys me flowers, and an especially nice bunch have just gone past their best. I’d love to be able to keep the memories of the flowers by pressing them.

I made a huge mess of pressing flowers for cards this xmas. I’m gonna keep trying to do it until I can learn to do this really beautifully.

i started a new press on sunday – two yellow daffodils and a yellow tulip (which kinda fell apart, so i’m not counting on that one).

i used wax paper this time and am pressing them under a leg of my murphy bed. after the last attempt i found out i didn’t need to raise the legs equally, the hinges take care of the difference. tres convenient.

i just checked on the flowers and they are all pretty wet. they seem to have soaked through most of the wax paper. the pages were a little damp, but certainly not wet, so i didn’t bother changing or adding any new wax paper. i did, however, move all the flowers about 25 pages in order to give them a fresh, dry pressing area.

i’m going to try to convince mike to go to home depot tomorrow for date night to help me make some real flower presses.

so i guess you can do this in the microwave now – um, cheating! if you press between the pages of a book you’re supposed to leave them for a few weeks. that’s how i am going to do my first batch, i think. i have two books of equal size and i am going to leave them under the legs of my bed.

wow, it woudl be cool to make a press using a book. put wood inside both covers and drill the holes as usual. you could totally do it. or maybe using a cd case with holes drilled in it. hmmm…much to think of