Pressing Flowers & Dried Flower Art – Try Something New Every Month

I took a craft class all about pressing flowers and created some art! It’s October, so I’m sharing another Try Something New Every Month (TSNEM) project- this month’s ‘theme’ was machine sewing, but I went off script and tried something else. You can see more about the year-long adventure and what else I’ve tried in this post.

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I took a local class at the Des Moines Botanical Garden and it was so much fun. She had us use Mod Podge Matte* to glue them down and also to seal them.

I was a little nervous with how it looked when it was wet, pretty sloppy, but she promised it would dry clear and not show the brush strokes like the shinier Mod Podge versions.

Can you believe this layout! It was a buffet of color; the instructor shared about several different flower press methods, and Amazon has a bunch of options* for different price ranges. Something else I enjoyed about the class was simply getting inspiration for how to used the flowers once you’ve pressed them. This was the most creative, I’m trying to think of how it might work for a Halloween costume!

One technique she shared was to slice fat, fluffy flowers like the purple mum, in half with a razor blade. I love the texture variations in this piece.

I was going for  a rainbow but was missing a true, deep red!

I tried to make a mandala as well but ran out of space pretty quickly.

The curved rainbow turned out to be my favorite, so it got framed and hung up on my wall!

So, the ‘try something new’ element was two-fold – it was the first craft class I’ve taken in person and also the first time I’ve worked with dried flowers. I love the idea of pressing flowers that we find on our nature walks, so I put a flower press on my holiday wish list! She said you can just use a book and paper, but that you run the risk of mold. I figure that my allergies are bad enough, I don’t need any moldy flowers in my house.

I brought home some extra flowers and am looking forward to making something with my son helping!