During the lockdown and stay-at-home orders, a lot of us suddenly found ourselves with a lot more time at home. A forced slow down.
When it comes to art in our lives, we particularly enjoy art that we made ourselves or that was made by a local artist or a friend. We have a couple of lovely small canvases from friends. We have a large digital collection of nature photos and landscapes from our travels and day-to-day life.
This spring, we tried pressing flowers, a catmint (catnip) flower and an iris, with mixed results.
- Pick flowers
- Allow the flowers to partially dry (2-3 days) – Especially for larger flowers
- Fold individual flowers into parchment paper
- Press in the pages of a large book (that you don’t particularly like)
- Forget about them for 2-3 weeks
So, we made a few mistakes. We put the flowers into the paper and into the book on the first day. We also meant to use parchment paper, but used wax paper instead. (I should have caught that, but didn’t. Oh well.)
This was sort of a low-risk, low-reward experiment. We were not really invested in it, but were more curious to try it and see if it is something to try again in the future.
So, after 2.5 weeks or so… The lovely iris got moldy and had to be discarded. I think there was just too much moisture to begin with, compounded by the use of wax paper. The book was unharmed, but still better not to use an important book for this.
However, the catmint flower dried easily and preserved rather nicely.
There are a number of crafts that you can make with pressed flowers. This was more of a trial run. Happily, since only one specimen came out. I like the shape. The color could be better preserved.
So far I can’t really think of anything to do with just one flower anyway. I do like the idea, though. Maybe we will try again next spring.
