Another post-wedding crafting! Though this was my second time as a bridesmaid, I've not had a fresh bouquet before. My sister went off on her honeymoon and the house was full of the beautiful flowers.
Unfortunately, but obviously, they all started to fade away and have now all had to be thrown out (I do still have my bouquet though, hanging up in the airing cupboard as a little experiment... more in another post!). Luckily, I did salvage a few fairly fresh blooms and a bit of foliage to attempt to press.
Now, I haven't pressed flowers since I had a tiny little press as a child so I did a little bit of research until I thought... "Whatever, it's just flattening them right?" I bought some blotting paper from Ryman and sliced up lots of old newspaper.
I'm not really much of an expert on flowers or plants (outside the house anyway!) so I'm not sure of the names of any of the bits I chose to try and press; there was definitely a rose in there though!
I read a few things on the internet, after giving up on my mum's rather 70s flower pressing book, about pressing before getting started. A particularly interesting nugget was separating the petals and the head of the flower before pressing. I'm pretty sure 'head' isn't the correct term, but after Google image searching flower anatomy I was none the wiser; I also didn't really want to write 'flower ovary' either. Hence I did a whole purple flower and separate one. I also did the same with some roses and other flowers. I even did individual stamens from some (I knew that one!).
I put the flowers between two sheets of blotting paper and used sheets of newspaper between these. For the 'pressing' part I managed to salvage two old dictionaries from my parents' garage before they went to the charity shop which are not as heavy as I remember but I'm hoping they do the job. It's all stacked in the corner of my room now and I have managed to not look at what is happening for ten days!
Here's hoping for good results in a few weeks when I see how they have got on!
