Dried Graduation Bouquet

After three weeks, the flowers have dried! (See Preserving Flowers.) As I have not yet found ornament balls on sale (well, it is July), I am leaving the rose aside to work with later.

My bouquet from graduation dried nicely. Some of the sunflower petals fell off, so I glued them back. Also, gravity caused the petals on the bottom to dry upwards, which doesn't look terrible, I guess. The craspedia (the other yellow one) is a little brown on top. The originally pink carnations have darkened to a beautiful dark red. The volderfrieden delphinium (blue trumpet-shaped ones) and
statice (purple) look as if they are alive, but they feel papery. The rose, originally orange, has become light orange with a bit of red (it was already past its prime when I decided to dry it).

I transferred the bouquet from the laundry room into the garage, where I lightly coated it with aerosol hairspray. For the vase, I cut the top off an old deodorant bottle made of a milky plastic, then painted the inside with a layer of blue acrylic paint. Because the bottle wasn't tall enough, I glued a ring of paper around the top. To make it thicker, I folded it in half lengthwise. I also painted a layer of diluted glue on it, but I don't think it made much of a difference. Then I just stuck the flowers in (I left the stems rubber-banded) and retied the ribbon from the bouquet. I am very pleased with the way it turned out!