Pressing Leaves and Flowers

In the Halloween party blog, I mentioned taking your children out to the woods and letting them pick beautiful leaves and pressing them.  I'm a kid at heart, I guess, because I love pressing odd shaped leaves and flowers.  In my workshop, I have quite a few leaves that I have pressed and they adorn my bulletin board.  I picked up several books at garage sales that are probably 5 inches thick for the purpose of pressing flowers and leaves.  You can buy a plant press, I just never have. 

Once you have found leaves that have fallen and still have sap in them (they haven't dried out) you want to bring them home and immediately press them.  If you wait several days, they dry out and will crumble.  I'm not sure how long it takes to dry them out.  I put mine in the pages of my books and leave them for several months.   I'm usually not in a hurray to use them for anything. I have also pressed pansies and they do very well. Flowers that have lots of petals do not press that well.  I just want to mention that the original color will fade somewhat.

I posted a picture of the silica gel crystals that I use to dry flowers.  This works great and I get it at Hobby Lobby.  I usually get about three of these containers because you want a good depth so it covers the flowers.  I put the gel in a long dish (like a casserole dish) and have the gel about 4 inches deep because you want the flower totally covered.  It takes about 3 weeks to a month to preserve the flowers but they look great.  I have done a lot of sunflowers and daisies and they turn out great and they last about 3 years after you preserve them.  I use mine a lot to decorate with, I'm handling them a lot.  If you didn't handle them much they would probably last longer than that.

I put a frame around one of the leaves to give you an idea of what this looks like.  I love this look.  I have always wanted to make a grouping of four different types of leaves and put them in our home but I haven't got that accomplished yet. 

This is such a great activity for children.  They end up with such an attractive art piece.  They will really be proud of themselves.  This would be a great gift for grandparents or aunts and uncles for b-days or Christmas or anytime.  Let children start by going to garage sales.  Everyone always has tons of picture frames at garage sales (not a lot of money involved in the frame).  They can paint it or leave it natural. Then to the woods, with the frame in mind, look for leaves you would like to frame.  It can be a grouping or just one leaf.  Press the leaf.  The child will need to decide on a background. Which can be plain or have a pattern to it. I like this project because children can learn that they can make some beautiful by being resourceful and creative.  They have a unique gift made by them that didn't involve a lot of money.  It's starts them to thinking how they can become producers and not consumers.

The last idea I want to share using dried leaves or small flowers is to put them into cards that you are sending to beloved family or friends. 

Have fun with this idea.  I know you'll come up with more ways to use nature and preserve her!