Preserving Flowers

With high school graduation just past (yippee!), I have a beautiful bouquet from my mom in the kitchen. And the rose from school (confession: I broke its stem in a moment of happy hugging). It's not the first time I've received meaningful flowers, but it is the first time I decided to think about preserving them. Originally, I just wanted to press the rose. But roses are round, and I wasn't sure how that would go.

So to the Internet I turned... I found that a.) if I wanted to press the rose I should slice it in half, and b.) other expensive methods aside, I could hang it upside-down and wait for it to dry.

Well that's not difficult. Except the waiting part. Two to three weeks! Sigh...

After further research, I found that many types of flowers can be dried that way. Including the ones in my bouquet (sunflower, rose, volderfrieden delphinium, craspedia, statice, carnation--I looked most of these names up).

So now I have lots of flowers hanging upside-down in the laundry room. For the rose whose stem broke, I threaded a piece of craft wire through the remaining bit of the stem and hung it from that. For the rest, I rubber-banded the stems and threaded some ribbon through it.

So now as I wait for the lack of water to do its job, I'm thinking of ways to display these dried flowers. I plan to apply a light coat of hairspray to the dried flowers to keep them stronger. After that... For the single rose, I'm thinking about placing it in a clear plastic ball, like an ornament (except that the openings of those are way too small. Perhaps a snow globe?). For the bouquet, I'd like to display it as a bouquet. I'm thinking about making a vase for it, then retying the original ribbon around it. However, that just seems like a dust collector, and it'd be a pain to dust... this still requires some brainstorming.

I can't wait for everything to dry!