When you think of drying flowers, you might imagine pushing a few blossoms between the pages of a huge book, but there are alternative techniques to dry flower stems that help them preserve their form.
If you have a bridal bouquet or a unique bloom that you want to retain as a souvenir, drying them with one of these ways can help you keep them for a long time. Dried flowers may also be used to construct floral arrangements that survive for years and look fantastic in resin making. Of course, you may dry herbs and use them in cooking or other crafts in addition to flowers.
The following article will go through a couple methods for drying flowers that you most likely already have on hand. However, you may also test alternative ways that require specific materials to see which ones you like!
Book Technique for Flower Drying
Pressing flowers in large books is still an effective way to preserve flowers. It appears old-fashioned, yet that is part of its allure. To add pressure, use huge heavy books and either wrap a strap or belt over them while pressing your flowers, or add something hard to the top. You may also wrap old belts or straps around your book to tighten the pages. This takes about a month to dry flowers in this manner. You risk cracking or breaking leaves if you open your book before the 30 days are up. However, after 30 days, your flowers will be nicely pressed and ready to use.
Essential Materials
- A Heavy book (it may be large with large blossoms)
- Old Belts
- Flowers
- Non-Bleached paper
Using a Press to Dry Flowers
Two pieces of wood with bolts in each corner can be used to make or purchase a straight forward flower press. Inside, stack them with cardboard pieces and two sheets of unbleached paper. Flowers should be tightly compressed between books or in a press before drying. Drying flowers using a press is a wonderful technique to make flat flowers for scrapbooking or embellishment projects.
Newspaper sometimes leaves dye behind, so you would not prefer not to use it in my flower presses. Use plain, unbleached, unprinted paper between your cardboard sheets to prevent print from bleeding through.
The flowers can be arranged reasonably closely together, but you should leave a tiny bit of space between each one.
Essential Materials
- 2 pieces wood with smooth surfaces
- 4 sets of bolt and nut
- Cardboard
- Non-Bleached paper
- Flowers
Air Dry Method
The air-dry method is one of the oldest and most widely used methods of flower drying. Air-drying also results in entire flower bouquets with undamaged stems. It's also one of the simplest approaches.
Flowers having a high water content should be avoided when air drying. They do not dry sufficiently and decay before they are completely dry.
Essential Materials
- Flowers
- Air 😊
Using a Silica Gel to Dry Flowers
If you want to save the majority of the color in larger blooms, silica gel is the best way to dry them. You may also use the microwave to speed up the drying process, so if you're eager, you can have dried blossoms in a matter of minutes rather than weeks. By far the quickest technique to dry flowers.
Essential Materials
- Silica Gel
- Mask
- Gloves
- Airtight glass or plastic container
- Flowers
- Garden pruners or scissors
- Squeeze bottles made of plastic
Using a Food Dehydrator to Dry Flowers
Flowers can be dried using food dehydrators. It wasn't as stunning as the silica gel, but it did the job. We had great success with a dried zinnia bouquet. A dehydrator is a device that uses heat to remove moisture from food or other substances. The most typical method involves the use of warm air circulated by a fan to remove the water content from the object being dried.
This type of dehydrator typically includes many shelves on which to place the item to be dried, allowing for equal drying.
Dehydratorscan be used to dry fruits and vegetables, herbs, meat, fish, and flowers, amongother things. Dehydration helps to preserve food by removing the water content that germs require to develop.
Drying flowers in a dehydrator allows you to handle a large batch at once, much more flowers than a standard oven can hold. However, while dehydrating flowers is far faster than hanging them, it will still take many hours longer than preserving them in an oven.
Essential Materials
- Food dehydrator
- Flowers
- Garden pruners or scissors
