Hi everybody — I originally put up a couple of pictures of my flower album in one of the kitty diaries, and there was enough interest, and people asked me enough questions, that I thought I would do a photo diary with a little info on the subject of flower pressing.
You can collect flowers for pressing anywhere — out of your garden (or other peoples’ gardens, with permission) from the woods (if you know it’s not forbidden to gather things there), from a bouquet of flowers you buy at the store. And it doesn’t take much to make a nice picture — very small flowers and leaves can turn into something beautiful when you arrange them.
I know there’s a lot of fad stuff out there, like overpriced flower presses and fancy ones that let you press flowers in the microwave (!) to save the time of waiting. I say pooh pooh on all that stuff.
You can press flowers with just a few very cheap materials. I use the 7 or 8 presses my Dad made for me in the summer of 1999 (when I first got interested), and flower pressing papers that I order online. But you actually don’t need even that.
If you or anybody you know is at all handy at woodworking, you can make presses like I have with a couple pieces of scrap lumber, long screws and washers and wingnuts.
Here’s one that Dad made me:
When you layer your flowers between the papers — cut stems off as close to the flower as you can and lay them facedown on the paper — then add another paper and another layer of flowers — make the stack as high as you want it.
But let’s say you don’t know anybody who can make a press for you, you don’t want to buy a bunch of schmancy flower press equipment, and you still want to try pressing some flowers right away.
Well — here’s what you can do — buy yourself a stack of ordinary paper plates like you can get at Cub — I use their Essential Everyday house brand paper plates. Just be sure they are PAPER plates, and not plastic or foam. Then stack up plates and flowers the same way, like so:
Put an empty plate on top of all, and then weight it. Anything will do — a rock, a heavy book, a quart jar full of small change. Whatever. What I am using in this picture is my 435th OMS Enroute “C” flight engraved beer stein that my squadron gave me when I left my base in Germany. Full of small change.
Be sure to put a sticky on there with the date and what flowers and greenery you have in there. Then — and this is the hard part — WAIT. At LEAST two weeks, preferably a month or two. Or more — more time in the press will just make them better. They will dry and be preserved by pressing. You can check them periodically to see if they are dried sufficiently yet. They should be dry and flat.
Ok — then you want to make some pictures with your creations — when you take them out of the press (and this will be a thrill, like opening a present — you never know how they are going to come out), then you can mount them on whatever medium you want. For my photo album pictures (coming up) I used plain old white card stock like you can buy at Office Depot in reams like copy paper. Handle your pressed flowers very delicately — it’s like working with butterfly wings — hold them with tweezers, gently put glue on the backside with a SMALL artist paintbrush, and arrange them on the card stock the way you want them. BTW, plain old Elmer’s Glue works just fine for this. I usually make a little puddle on a separate plate, and use it to dip my paintbrush. It works great, and dries transparent.
Some flowers will fade eventually — even though pressed. Having them in a framed picture or under plastic goes a long way to preserving the color. The two pictures up top I eventually took out of the frames and put in my album. They faded a lot from being exposed to the air (no plastic over those) but they still look cool.
Anyhoo — that’s a little tips and tricks on my favorite hobby, now here’s some pics of my favorite album pages. Apologies for the flash reflections on some of the plastic — I did my best, but it was impossible to keep those off entirely.
I have lots more in my photo album, but you gotta stop somewhere. :):):)
I hope you have enjoyed this glimpse into what for me is a most relaxing and satisfying pastime.
Love, Rose