how do i dry flowers? will they loose colour?
Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 at
5:50 am
my bf bought me flowers, and i want to preserve / keep them.
how do i do it with books?
upside down drying?
will they loose colour?
Filed under: Dried Flowers
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For most flowers, the best way is to put them in a lidded plastic tub with floral quality silica gel — the moisture gets sucked out of them very fast and they dry the color they were born! All colors will fade after a year or two – you can prevent this to a degree by keeping them out of direct light.
You can buy silica gel at a local art supply store or hobby shop.
Here’s an awesome site that gives you a step by step on how to dry your flowers:
http://www.proflowers.com/flowerguide/howtodryflowers
Microwave drying will preserve the colour better than any other technique.
Good luck!
The silica gel works & so does drying upside down. The color does darken, especially on the hanging upsidedown. Not all flowers do well with drying.
One thing I have done with roses, once the flowers are completely dry. Mount the flowers in a glass container, vase or jar, as long as it has a lid to seal it. Put in some decorative glass or pebbles in the bottom, just enough to hide the bottom of the stems. You can cut the flowers to different lengths. If you glue the flowers to the bottom, wait till the glue is completely dry befor going to the next step. Fill the jar up to the top with baby oil. You can use other oils, but this is the clearest I have found. Seal the jar. Once the roses have soaked up the oil, they look like live roses again. The color comes back. White roses tend to look a little translucent, yellow doesn’t come back as cleanly, but red roses are amazing.