Celebrate Spring by Making a Pressed Flower Card - Part One

The ways to use pressed flowers in your crafting are endless – pressed flowers adorning your hand made cards is just one example.

Small, colorful, fresh flowers are easy to press, fun to collect and they’re free! They can be stored away for years, but can also be used in your crafts a few days after collecting. Small, thin petals as used here will be ready in just a couple of days.

If you don’t have a flower press, just place the flowers between two sheets of wax paper and weight down by pressing inside a heavy book. The wild Mexican violets used in the card above were pressed in an old phone book and then stored in the wax paper inside a box for two years before using.

A small press like this works well for small flowers. I like to press several small flowers together on the same sheet of wax paper and larger ones by themselves.

Supplies

For Flower Pressing:

• Small flower press or a large, heavy book
• Two 8 x 10-inch pieces of wax paper
• Small fresh flowers of various colors picked in the afternoon – the best time to pick flowers for pressing as there is less moisture in them at that time of day

For the Pressed Flower Card:

• Blank note card with a window and matching envelope – or make your own as described in the Directions
• White PVA glue like Elmer’s Glue-All
• Glue stick
• Small piece of cellophane or clear Mylar*
• Stencil frame (as used for scrapbooking) – see example below
• Two small scraps of colored paper – one to place the flowers on and the other for the card’s greeting
• Gold pen
• Tweezers
• Decorative scissors – optional
• Craft knife – optional
• Envelope template – optional

* Note: I like to save any sturdy pieces of cellophane that come in the mail with something or in the packaging of things I have bought; but you can purchase Mylar at any craft store.

Please come back tomorrow for the Pressed Flower Card Directions.

Tags: spring crafts, card making project, pressed flower card how-to, how to press flowers, how to make window frame card, craft ideas, cardmaking tutorial, paper craft