pressing flowers

Okay I know this sounds really lame and granny-ish but I promise you can do some really cool stuff with pressed flowers. I know I'm lacking on the 'beauty' related posts but it's summer so there are lots of cool 'summer craft' ideas kicking around in my little head.

Ok so the first thing you need for pressing flowers is obviously some flowers! In Cape Breton there are TONNES of really really nice flowers that grow every summer that look great when pressed, daisies and lupins just to name a few.

Grab a tonne of big, heavy books (what a great way to put to use all of those big, bulky psychology text books that you ahem, "read" during University).

You will also need some paper towel and wax paper!

So here's how it's done:

• Go outside and pick flowers like a hippie and/or 5 year old child...


• Once you've got what you think you'll need, take one of those heavy text books and open it to say, about 1/2 way, and place a sheet of wax paper the side of the 2 pages inside, laying it out flat.


• Take 1-2 sheets of paper towel and do the same, depending on the size of the text book.


• Next arrange the flowers (hey, you can also pick some leaves and stuff, they work great for fillers!) so that they do not overlap and touch, this will probably make them stick together when they are done..but if you want them to stick together by all means go ahead..


• Close the book (you can keep putting pages of flowers in the book, or use other books and pile them on top of one another) and leave sit for approximately 24 hours. The paper towel helps absorb the flowers moisture and the wax paper keeps it from ruining the pages of the texts. If you don't wish to save your text books, you can omit the wax paper :)


• Once you've pressed all your flowers you can arrange them in a cool pattern or you can use one single flower and frame them! They look super cool! I picked some purple flowers and framed them for my friend who was moving into her first place and her bedroom was purple, they looked great in a black frame with a white border mat.