Drying Flowers

I love the dried flowers! Not the brown, crunchy kind that have not been taken care of, but the flowers that still have color. When I walk through the flowers at Hobby Lobby and Michaels, I always end up in the dried flower section. I love them! I just don't like the prices on them.

Several years ago, I was watching a DIY show and the lady was talking about drying flowers and how to keep them from looking "unloved". The one thing that she stressed was that drying flowers was easy without using chemicals; you really don't need it for most flowers. She took a bouquet of roses and wrapped a rubber band around the stems and then wrapped the other end of the band around a wire clothes hanger. She even clipped a clothes pin to hold the rubber band for added protection. The lady went on to say to hang the hanger where the flowers will be able to hang without touching anything, so they won't end up with a mashed side.  Once the flowers are dried, spray them with a clear acrylic spray.
 
I did this with some of the small flowers that came from my Mother in law's funeral in 2008. The flowers that had color other than white or cream, has kept their color. The first picture with shows a cream and dark pink edged rose. The pink has stayed. The red roses did beautifully.


In this photo, you'll see how all the roses stayed closed and perfect in shape except for the one with the arrow. I think I have bumped it several times while dusting, so it has loosened up some.  As for dusting? All I do is gently blow on the flowers.

Back in January our spring flowers began blooming. In our woods we found two places that are about 20x20 full of daffodils.   These were some that I picked. After keeping them in water for about a week, I noticed that they began to dry. So I bundled them up  and hung them in my laundry room, not knowing how they would do...

I went to the laundry room on Wednesday and pulled the daffodils down and this is what I found. They are very papery. I did spray them, so hopefully, I'll be able to keep them awhile. The brown bottle I put them in is one of my husband's treasures he found while digging around in the woods.

The only thing about the daffodils is their heads tend to turn up when they are hanging. So I ran out to the field and picked a few more and hopefully came up with a solution.  DO NOT LAUGH!

I knew I wanted to try and keep the heads up when they are dried. So I took a piece of twine and tied around the stems right under the flower. Then I put the flowers in a tissue paper tube and put them in just a smidgen of water, since I'm not wanting to keep these out for long. Tonight I'll take the flowers and the tube and hang them upside down. Hopefully, the weight of the tube will help hold the flowers down while drying.

This was an experiment on drying daffodils. I am not an expert on flower drying.