Pressed Flowers 101

Caitlin
Apr 18, 2019
3 min read

I have to tell you guys a secret. I used to hate when someone would buy me flowers. Why you ask? I honestly don’t know. My husband only bought me flowers a handful of times and I would always think that they were a waste of money. I mean they look pretty, but they are going to die. I would have preferred him buy me some plants I can use in my garden, or of course something I could eat!

I borrowed a book from my local library about hygge last summer and it really changed my views on a lot of things. If you don’t know what hygge is, it is basically a danish way of living. It is about creating a comfy, cozy environment to live in. One of the ways that they create hygge is with surrounding your home with pretty flowers, nice smelling candles and soft low light. I figured why not try a couple of things. I was walking in the grocery store and saw this really pretty bouquet of wildflowers and it was only five dollars so I thought, why not!

Ever since that moment I always try and have fresh flowers in my home. I put them on my dining room table and in my bedroom. I really love having something from the outdoors surround me. It really does add an ambiance to my home. You don’t need to spend a lot of money either. I honestly get my flowers for Aldi’s or Walmart. They last long if you change the water a couple of times and they usually have a really great selection. My favorite flowers are sunflowers so I try to best to find the bouquets with them in it.

Even though I love having flowers in my home, I still had the mindset of “oh, well they are just going to die anyway”. I wanted to come up with a way that I could keep the little pieces of happiness that I looked forward to everyday.

My answer came to me after I was sick over the winter. I had a nasty stomach bug that just

wouldn’t go away. My husband came home early from work to take care of me and brought home these beautiful daisies. It was such a sweet gesture and I didn’t have the heart to throw them away, so I decided to dry them and add them to an open frame I had gotten from Target a couple of years ago.

I went on Pinterest (of course!) and researched how to dry flowers. There were so many ways including using a flower press (yeah, there is such a thing) that I was getting pretty overwhelmed. I finally found a way to press flowers in old books! Well I have a ton of them laying around so I figured that would be my best option.

It is so easy you guys. You just make sure that the flowers are dry, place them on a piece of paper and put them in between two pages of a heavy book. Place that book between other heavy books and that’s it! You need to wait a couple of weeks, but after that you will have perfectly pressed flowers that will last years.