Flower pressing ~ a fun and frugal hobby

Spring is the time for flowers. God has blessed us with many beautiful ones to enjoy. One thing that we enjoy doing with them is collecting some and pressing them in our flower press. After drying for a few days or a few years we have fun pulling them out and using them to make a beautiful craft project.

Pressing flowers is not that hard here is what you will need:

• A flower press. The one I have was a homemade gift from some friends. I have used it for years now and really like it. Here are instructions to make one very similar to mine. Another option is to use a big book which we did a lot before I got my flower press. Simply chose a book like Strong's concordance, encyclopedias or a dictionary and open it up in the middle, place a piece of absorbent paper on each side and put the flowers in between.
• Fresh flowers. Flowers that work best have pretty thin petals like pansies, johny-jump-ups, violets and things like that. If you want a rose it is best to press individual petals. Just experiment to see what you like best. When placing them in the press it is important to make sure they are laying the way you want them to before you squish the other paper on top. I usually work them into place with my fingers. If you don't watch with that you can easily get ones that have all the petals on one side or look funky in other ways.

After you have your pressed flowers some ideas for using them are:

• Make beautiful homemade note cards. You can just glue the flowers on the cardstock in a neat arrangement. (Here are some beautiful examples)
• Decorate a bookmark. When doing this it is nice to put clear contact paper over the top to keep the flowers secure.
• Pressed flowers can also be added to homemade paper. (See here)
• Laminated place mats.
• Putting on objects such as lamps, trays, decorative bird houses, etc.
• Frame it. You can either make a combination of just pressed flowers or add it to a neatly written verse or poem. Last year Mara and Jonathan made some in a church class where they wrote out a verse and glued pressed flowers around it and framed it. They then gave them to me for Christmas. I really, really like them. It is fun to have their childish handwriting kept in such a sweet way. Here is a project that I made and framed with pressed flowers.

For many more ideas and instructions on making and using pressed flowers, visit Elizabeth's Pressed Flowers.

Have you made or used pressed flowers? I would love to hear your favorite ideas for them! For more Frugal Friday posts visit Life as Mom.