Coloring Pressed Dried Flowers

If you've ever pressed and dried flowers, you've seen how the colors change as they dry. Maybe you would like to preserve the original color better, or enhance it?

Flowers are ephemeral by nature, but gardeners, artists and crafters have long tried to preserve them nonetheless.

I have done a lot of reading about the coloring of dried and pressed flowers recently and I thought you might be interested in some of what I learned. The old fashioned method of sticking them in a fat book for a while has met with some modern improvements! But even so, sometimes the results are better than others.

I am generally happy with air dried hydrangeas and a simple pressed violet or two, but in some cases the results need to be more precise. For example, I have always admired the highly competitive pressed flower pictures shown at the Philadelphia Flower Show. That's when the finer points of the process become critically important.

On your path to perfection, you might try using a flower press, a microwave, or glycerine to dry your flowers (and foliage too). Or you might want to dye your dried flowers, spray paint them, or color them with pastels. Who knew there were so many options! There is even a World Wide Pressed Flower Guild for the truly devoted.

Check out the assorted links I found -- I've sorted and listed them under Dried Flower Colors in the Flower Gardens discussion area. Please feel free to share any expertise you may have or ask any related questions there -- or add a quality link or two.

And if you feel the need to cover a different topic, please click here and scroll down a bit to start a new discussion! Thanks!