In spring and summer forests, fields, meadows, gardens, terraces and balconies are filled with life and color thanks to the resurgence of plants and flowers. Collect them with care to press them at home allows you to always enjoy its delicate beauty.
With them you can make small compositions that brighten cards, notebooks or bookmarks with their color and delicacy, or even more elaborate and complex paintings, a very popular and ancient art in Japanwhere it is known as oshibana.
It is advisable to select flowers that are not very large and that do not provide too much water, such as daisies, thoughtsmauves, violets or oleanders. To give more variety to the composition, you can incorporate stems such as lavender, mimosa or rosemary, and beautifully shaped leaves such as clover, fig or ginkgo.
The optimal time to collect them is the evening of a sunny day. Then the flowers will have already lost part of their natural hydration and their drying will be faster. Flowers are living beings, it is important to respect them.
«We will take them without damaging the root and making sure that there are other specimens in the surrounding area, so that they can reproduce the following year,» advises Benedetta Barzanò in her book pressed flowers (Ed. De Vecchi).
Keys for pressing
Once home, the flowers should be pressed as soon as possible to prevent them from deteriorating. Before doing so, you must make sure that there are no insects inside. If so, it must be carefully removed, as should any traces of soil.
Can be pressed with the stem or alone. In the latter case, they are placed face down on a piece of blotting paper (sold in craft stores), which will absorb the moisture from the flower. If they have a bell shape (as happens for example with the daffodil, the oleander or the digitalis), it is advisable to cut the base of the flower while carefully holding it by the petals. This way the pressed flower will be flatter.
Options for drying them
Press flowers It allows you to perpetuate its beauty in two dimensions, by flattening them and reducing their volume. The easiest way to do this is by entering them between two pages of a thick bookcovered above and below with blotting paper (or several layers of absorbent kitchen paper).
This is a good option if flowers are pressed sporadically. But if you are looking for a more professional result, you can make a wooden press like the one in the photo above. Thanks to it, the pressure applied to the flower is firmer and more homogeneous.
In addition to the press, to increase the pressure between the different layers of blotting paper You can use cardboard sheets or newspaper. If they are moist and the flower has not yet dried, they can be replaced with others with great care, ensuring that the flowers that are between the blotting paper do not move.
Drying time It varies between each type of flower, so it is advisable to arrange flowers of the same or very similar species on the same blotting paper.
Beauty in sight
To the remove moisture from flowers These last a long time. If not all the pressed flowers or leaves are used in a composition, the remaining ones can be put in different envelopes separated by species and stored in a dark, dry place.
To make it easier to identify them later, the type of flower is written on the envelope or a small sample is pasted on it. As we gain experience and skill in this art we will be able to create compositions of greater difficulty.
A painting in which flowers of different sizes and shapes are interspersed, a frame for a photo or a box adorned with a garland of flowers pressed These are some examples of the decorative possibilities of this simple and rewarding technique.