How to Press Flowers

I prefer a simple and fast method, which gives you an opportunity to correct your mistakes. I am speaking about the drying with the help of an iron. For this you will need tissues.

You can watch my video or read instructions down below.

You can take one-use napkins, the important thing here is to find the one with an even surface. Such tissues or paper towels won’t do because they will leave their prints on petals.

Supplies

flowers, tissues, iron or semolina

Step 1: Iron

I don’t take paper, even if it is perfectly smooth and even, because moisture removes worse through paper, and a tissue either absorbs moisture or easily evaporates it. Next goes an iron. I don’t fill it with water and I also turn off the steam regime, as we are going to dry and we don’t need additional moisture.

Flowers. The flowers must be fresh, it’s better put them in water after picking. Speaking about me drying the flowers in the countryside, I prefer popping in the garden, picking 2 or 3 plants and then going back and drying them up, and after that do all the same steps.

If a flower is voluminous, I try trimming it as much as possible, to protect it from falling apart. I put a tissue on it and iron it. Do not leave your iron on the same spot, otherwise your flowers will boil in their own juice. From rime to time put up your iron to let the moisture go out.

Very carefully unattach the flowers. Carefully because this might happen. To unattach a flower evenly, gradually unbend the tissue from it. I advise you after the ironing putting the flowers into a book, because it might be that they didn’t completely dry up, because there are situations when you put flowers on a table, but they hadn’t completely dried up and then they began becoming wavy, however in a book they will 100% dry up and also you will know for sure how they will look like.

Voluminous plants for herbarium are also possible to be dried up following this method. Slowly and carefully press your plant with an iron along the plant height and you will succeed. You can also try straightening out a plant after the first ironing.

In other words, you have ironed a plant for a second, it got soaked a bit, you put away the upper tissue and carefully straightening out the petals not to damage them because they become extremely fragile, then put the tissue back and dry it completely up.

Step 2: Semolina

One more amazing way of drying things up and save the volume of a dried flower is to use semolina.

All you have to do is put some flowers in semolina and pour some more semolina on them, avoid such bumps otherwise when you will try to transfer your jar your bump will fall apart and the flowers will be damaged.