Handmade Gifts: Working with Pressed Flowers

Before you toss out your containers filled with beautiful annual flowers that won’t make it through the winter, try pressing some of them, to make original handmade gifts. Pressed flowers can be used in a variety of ways, and with a little planning couldn’t be simpler. Don’t have the time or patience to dry your own? You can buy them online.

Drying flowers and leaves

You know those phone books that keep showing up at your door, the big clunky books that no one uses anymore? They are great for pressing flowers. There’s something about the paper that absorbs the moisture from the flower and they are so big that you can press quite a few flowers in one book. It usually takes a couple of weeks until they are ready, depending on how thick the flower or leaf. All you need to do is take a few flowers and leaves and place them in the book, starting somewhere near the back, leaving a little room between each flower. Then, flip to another section, making sure that you have 50 or so pages between each flower section.

Here are a few projects ideas:

Framed Floral Wreath
Just use Mod Podge (watered down Elmers glue works too) to glue each item to a sturdy white paper base cut to fit the frame. You can start by placing a circle of glue on the paper but you really need to put the glue on the back of each flower also, before placing them on the paper.

Pressed Flower Card
Here I used different leaf material to use as stems for the flowers. I’ve also seen a bouquet made on a card which looks great too.

Floral Bookmark
This is probably the easiest one to make. You don’t need a lot of flowers and you can simply glue the flowers in a collage on a strip of cardstock. To help protect the bookmark add an extra layer of Mod Podge on top. It will look messy at first but dries clear.