Pressing flowers.

Flower preservation can be a tricky process. There are numerous ways to preserve flowers and while one method may work well for one type of flower, it may not work as well for another.

Case-in-point with wildflowers. Wildflowers are perhaps one of the trickiest to preserve, in my opinion. While I’m not a biologist I would guess that their water content is lower and they are generally just more delicate and fussy to dry than their domesticated counterparts.

But I have found that the simplest and oldest methods seem to work the best when it comes to pressing flowers. i’ve tried pressing them between parchment paper, wax paper, and tissue paper. Parchment and wax paper left little opportunity for moisture to absorb and sadly I’ve had many lovely flowers that did not withstand the mold that took hold through this process and ultimately had to be discarded.

Tissue paper and very heavy and flat surfaces do, however, have much better results. And yet my favorite method to successfully press flowers falls back to the ancient-old and simple method of pressing between book pages.

One of my favorite types of books to do this with are very specifically the handmade, leather bound books because their pages are thicker, more absorbenta. Not only that but also because they just seem too special and otherworldly to not contain one of Earth’s kindest treasures.

For example, the english daisy. I love this hearty annual and I grow it all through the summer in my yard. Through trial and error I’ve found that this flower is its prettiest when pressed. It’s petals are abundant, delicate, and tiny and yet they still manage to stay in tact somehow and they don’t seem to shrink as much when dried.

On the other hand, the Utah Daisy, which is prolific in my area and is in the same family as that of the English Daisy is a little different. In my opinion, it seems to keep it’s whimsical charm by a very gentle and classic method of drying out naturally, while lying flat.

Not only does it keep it’s volume…

But it also keeps it’s whimsical charm and beauty. Periwinkle petals.

Also, last year I had one small petunia plant that I had purchased on clearance and half-heartedly planted it because my son really liked it. It took off and had many, many blooms throughout the summer. I decided to experiment with pressing it, just for funsies. It proved to be a beautiful flower to press as, while it’s extremely fragile and breakable, it also becomes rather transparent and takes on an ethereal quality once pressed and dried completely. It reminds me of stained glass.