Good Morning! Do you have any exciting plans for the weekend? Last night we had a family wedding to attend, today I will spend most of my time dedicated to an interior design project and tomorrow is church followed by more time spent working on my interior design project!
Currently I am sitting at my kitchen table enjoying the beautiful weather and sunshine. My windows and back door are open and I can hear kids playing outside and birds chirping! Its sounds and feels like Spring is underway. Time to take down the St. Patrick’s Day decorations and fill the house with fresh flowers, Spring wreaths, and Easter decor. This time of year is so beautiful, not too hot, but nice enough to layout by the pool, spend time in your garden, or enjoy outdoor activities! I thought today’s post would be Spring fitting, because I know most of you will have many centerpieces with fresh flowers and if your anything like me, you sometimes wish you could do something to preserve them. A couple of weeks ago I showed you how to make potpourri, which several of you seemed to love, judging by your comments on the blog and Facebook, so I thought it would be fun to share with you another way! Have you ever heard of pressing flowers? As a little girl, I remember my mom and dad pressing flowers in books, as well as my grandparents too! Flower pressing is a method that has been in existence for more than 500 years. The process was used to preserve plant specimens for cataloging and identifying, as well as for art. In the Victorian period, the craft gained popularity and became very fashionable among ladies. You don’t see this craft done as much today, but I think it is very pretty! As a little girl I would open up old books and find pressed flowers, they were so delicate, but yet the details of the flower remained and I always thought of it as a pretty way to dress up the pages of a book! There are many ways to press flowers these days. People use irons and all kinds of things, but I like the way my parents and grandparents did it, the old fashion way. Take a thick book (I used my dads synonym dictionary and a Bible my grandma had given me), open the book to the center pages, gently take the soft rose (or flower) and sandwich the flower between the pages, gently press down, and use additional heavy books or other heavy objects to push the book together. Wait a week and your flower will have dried and been flatten by the weight. The end result, will be a beautifully pressed flower decorating the center pages of your book! You can use these pressed flowers for many crafts, but for now mine are delicate pretties adorning the pages of my books!
XO,
Rachel Ashley
My parents and grandparents also did this method as do I but the only difference is I was showed to put the flower in a piece of wax paper. I’m not saying that the way I was shoed is the correct way I just was adding to ur post.