Quick and Easy Dried Flowers

The Zaitleys
by The Zaitleys
3 Materials
$20
5 Minutes
Easy

We’ve been wanting do a gallery wall in our front hall for a while now. First step is finding enough interesting pieces to make up a nice gallery! So I decided to make a few pieces myself using a very easy and very quick flower drying technique.


I love the simple look of specimen art so I decided to recreate that using dried flowers.


I experimented with a bunch of different flowers using a bouquet (thanks Matt) that was about to turn. I tried different ones until I got the look I wanted.

What you will need for this project:


-       2 heavy microwave safe plates

-       Paper towel

-       Flowers or greenery 

-       Frames 

I used heavy clay plates for this project. 


You will want to first prep your flowers by cutting them as close to the bud as possible. You will want your flower to be as flat as possible so get rid of anything that isn’t visually appealing and adds bulk.


You will then want to line your plate with a few sheets of paper towel. The paper towel will absorb and pull away the excess water from the flowers, allowing the flower to dry. 


After the paper towel is in place you can place your flowers on the paper towel lined plate. Remember that this is how your flower is going to dry and harden so place them with care and adjust as you like. 


Place an additional paper towel on top of the flower and secure in place by adding the second plate on top. Like a flower sandwich with the plates as bread!

Not happy I forgot to clean the microwave before I took this pic! haha



Next is to start microwaving, this will be a bit of trial and error, so go slow. This depends on the strength of your microwave. I placed my flower sandwich in the microwave for 30 second intervals and checked them. A few of the pieces I used had a lot of moisture in them so I left them in a bit longer, and replaced the paper towel in between sessions so they would be sitting in soggy paper and were able to crisp up nicely. My average microwave time was between 1 and1.5 minutes.


When you take your plates out of the microwave please wear gloves and be very careful. They will be very hot! 


After my flowers were removed from the plates I carefully moved them to a fresh and dry paper towel to cool off and crisp up. I left them out overnight and they were perfect in the morning.



I placed them sparsely in simple frames and I’m so happy with how they turned out.

Resources for this project:
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The Zaitleys
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  • Julie Julie on May 03, 2021

    Did you press them between 2 pices of glass? or just one over the back of the frame. I think it would look cool to see through the glass, like stain glass . But IDK if that would effect the flowers,

  • Kc Nordquist Kc Nordquist on May 03, 2021

    Did you find that the colors faded a lot? It sort of looks to me as though the flowers are quite a bit browner hanging on the wall.

  • Debbie Garrison Debbie Garrison on May 02, 2022

    Years ago a friend made some of these. I loved them but they got bugs in them that ate them up. Have you had that problem?

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