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As the growing season winds down and the holiday season approaches, our minds turn to gift-giving. What could be more thoughtful than a gift from your garden? Using dried and pressed flowers, you can craft unique floral-themed items for the special people in your life.
One of the simplest ways to create a gift with pressed flowers is to make a vignette in a frame. Any frame will work for this project, so choose one that suits your gift recipient’s tastes. Arrange the dried flowers and leaves in an artful design, using a contrasting piece of cardstock for the background. Depending on your choice of flowers, this framed arrangement can be suitable for seasonal or year-round display.
Decoupage is another great choice for creating decor with pressed flowers. Use a decoupage medium, available at any craft store, to adhere the flowers to clean, flat surfaces. Then top with additional decoupage glue to seal the flowers in place. You can use this technique to decorate a custom box, serving tray, side table, or mirror frame. Any of these would make a cheerful addition to a young girl’s room or a treasured gift for a gardener.
Another fun project using pressed flowers is adding them to the outside of a candle. This can be done with a pillar candle of any color or scent. Soy wax is a good choice here, as it burns cleaner than other waxes. There are many methods for creating floral candles, but we like the simpler techniques.
One option is to use the back of a hot spoon to melt the wax a little at a time so you can lay the flowers on the softened wax. Heat the spoon by holding it over the flame of another lit candle. Work in small sections to adhere the flowers and leaves to the tacky wax. Larger flowers may require heating the wax several times. After the arrangement is in place on the candle, go over it again with the hot spoon back to seal the flowers in their final positions.
Another option for adhering pressed flowers to a candle uses wax paper and a heat gun (available at craft stores). Again, this process will work with any pillar candle. Cut the wax paper to the height of the candle and 1.5 times the length around the candle. Arrange your dried blooms directly on the wax paper. Then roll the candle so that the wax paper with the flowers is tightly wrapped around it.
You will use the heat gun to warm the wax paper so that the flowers and a coating of wax transfer from the paper to the candle. Keep the heat gun moving at all times to avoid melting the candle underneath, and be cautious of your fingertips getting near the end of the heat gun. When you unroll the wax paper, the flowers will have transferred to the candle and will be coated with a fine layer of wax from the paper.
Perhaps you’ve received flowers as a gift and you’d like to use the dried blooms to say “thank you”. You can use pressed flowers to create a one of a kind greeting card with a personal touch. Blank greeting cards can be purchased at any craft store and are a blank canvas for your creativity. Use other decorative elements such as ribbon or buttons to embellish the card as well.
Floral greeting cards would also be thoughtful for a birthday or Mother’s Day. Dried evergreen or holly would make a festive Christmas card. Use flowers from your own garden, or the favorite flower of your recipient, to personalize the card even more.
There are countless ways to create meaningful gifts with pressed flowers. These gifts are suitable for any occasion and are limited only by your imagination. Try one of these projects, and create a keepsake that will be treasured for years.
