pressing flowers

kati and i did some flower pressing today and i took photos to show you how easy it is. all you need are some flowers, paper and heavy books. (a cute cat is optional :)

i picked these wildflowers on my walk to the community garden this morning. the violets were growing on the side of the road. they are new jersey's state flower (nerd alert!), and violets are edible! i get very excited when i see them. the periwinkle was planted by one of the community garden members and it's spreading all over. i love it.

so all i do is lay the flowers out nicely on a plain sheet of paper, bloom side down, making sure none are overlapping. also make sure your flowers are dry before you press them, and check that there are no ants or other little critters living inside. these heavy hardcover books that i inherited from my grandpop jake are perfect for pressing. so are phone books and textbooks. the newer flowers go to the bottom of the pile (inside the books or in between them - i do both). after the first few hours you can check to see if they need repositioning, but after that they should be left undisturbed for about a month (though i know in the beginning it's so hard not to peek!)

in the past i've used tissue paper for pressing, but i found it left creases in some of the flower petals. now i use computer paper, and sometimes i just press right inside the book. the flowers above are bachelor buttons that i pressed the summer my grandmother passed away. she loved bachelor buttons, so i'm going to use them to make a gift for my mom in remembrance of our gg ♥

storing the flowers was a bit of an issue until i just started to tape them into a composition book. oh, and labeling the flowers is a good idea, but i tend to forget.

most of the flowers grew in the garden - some i planted, and many are weeds! some of my favorite pressings are weeds wildflowers, like these lil sweeties. i've named them baby butterfly puffs. =)

do you press flowers? i can't believe how simple it is. i used to think i needed a flower press to do it (would still love one though!). you could really press flowers in any old book, and i think i may start carrying one around to press on-the-go.

"flowers are like friends; they bring color to your world."

♥

pressed flower framed heart

i made this flower heart frame for a wedding in early september. attached was a card - "this gift was made with flowers that bloomed the summer of your wedding." i wanted to say something more poetical but that's all i could come up with. my intention was to give the couple a handmade floral keepsake to commemorate the months leading up to their big day.

yours truly attended the wedding as the nanny!=) there were five children ages 2 through 6 in the wedding and along with another girl, i helped care for the kids. it was a challenge, but i had a good time. it took place at the beautiful smithville inn, and we got to ride the carousel in our dresses!=)

most of the flowers in the frame were pressed in july/early august. at first i was pressing them inside books between sheets of tissue paper, but this left creases. so now i use sheets of computer paper or nothing at all. the books are stacked high, and the freshest flowers are on the bottom. the photos i took to show you this process were accidentally deleted. it's pretty simple. just make sure the flowers are really dry in the center before you press!

pressed flower jar labels

for the june food swap, i wanted to make nice labels to go on my jars. i love the organic feel of pressed flowers, so i glued them to some old recycled stock paper that was first cut into circles.
 

the flower above was from a weed in my garden. they seem to only bloom at night! i think they're really pretty pressed. some of the other flowers were weeds (like clover), pansies and cilantro.

oh, i must mention the lavender sugar! it tastes so nice in mint tea! to make lavender sugar i followed an easy recipe online - 2 cups cane sugar blended with 2 tablespoons dried lavender.

lavender has calming effects, as does chamomile tea. next time i'm feeling stressed or anxious, methinks i'll throw a little lavender sugar in my chamomile tea!=)

pressed lavender

pressed flower bookmark

since reading kaylah's post last month, i've been pressing every flower i can get my hands on. it's so much easier than i imagined it would be. there are fancy flower presses out there, but i'm finding books work just fine. to keep the flowers from scattering all over, i fold them in tissue paper first. after about two weeks my flowers were dried.

for the bookmark i followed forever flowers, a nice book on flower pressing that i found at the library. i just glued the flowers on and when they were dry, i covered the whole surface with mod-podge. i'm going to give this bookmark to my grandmom. she loved to read and always bought me books. i'd buy her cute bookmarks at school book fairs as tokens of my appreciation. i can't wait to do more with pressed flowers!