Flower and Leaf Drying Progress

 The title is a misnomer really, because this was not so much progress as I needed The Principles of Knitting by June Hiatt to weight something else on my desk.  Well, a paper project where I am making some booklets that have covers being glued.

So, when I was thinking of something to use as a "paper weight" I thought of The Principles of Knitting which has more than 700 pages.  A fabulous book but so far I have mostly used it for drying flowers and now, weighting glued covers!

In the summer when the hydrangeas were out I was given a few blooms and another friend gave me some Coleus leaves.  

After I put them between cotton makeup sponge circles I inserted a dozen or so between pages in the PoK.  Now, months later, I have pulled them out.

The sponges did leave a little residue on the plant parts but that will be easily removed.

The new ones from pressing are the leaves and white blooms on the top of the pile. You can see the residue but it is not a problem.

First Effort at Drying Hydrangea Blossoms!

 Yesterday I decided it was time to open The Principles of Knitting by June Hiatt where I had been drying some hydrangea blossoms. SUCCESS!

This is how I did it:  purchased some cotton make-up sponges and got out one of our heaviest books.  

Carefully pulled a blossom off the hydrangea head and spread it as flat as possible on the cotton sponge that I had opened but not all the way. I thought leaving the "hinge" would make it easier to keep together.

Placed a dozen or so of these sponges per page every quarter inch then closed the book for about a month.

The blooms came out great, I thought!  They are flat, dry, even leathery so they don't feel as if they will fall apart. They even have nice color, though less than when they went inside the book.

Such a happy success!  Now to use them for greeting cards.  Don't know if I am creative enough to make something worth sending.  Well, I do know!  I am NOT that creative but someone on YouTube will have done it and shared...so there is hope. And maybe next season I will try again.

Craft Failure: Flower Drying in the Microwave

Lots of buzz out there about drying flowers in the microwave by putting them in a book then closing with elastic bands.  I thought I would try it.  After all, greeting cards with dried flowers on them are very very cool.

Well, this was a real failure.  The white petunia melded with the paper.  The colored petunias  were barely better but impossible to remove from the paper.  The black-eyed Susan was just a mess.

So, I will not be doing that again.  Seriously, once was enough on this project.  There are too many other projects out there....

Fortunately no one objected to me taking a few flowers from the backs of plants where they were unnoticeable.