What to do with Valentine's Flowers?
Well, it's four days since you received those beautiful Valentine's flowers and they still look gorgeous but you know in a day or two they're going to start to wilt. What to do? What to do?
Maybe you received lovely long stemmed roses (I'm jealous) or a bouquet with a variety of colorful blossoms. Whatever the case may be, let's see how we can go about preserving them for use in other projects.
As I've written about in The Art of Drying Flowers, there are several methods to drying or preserving your blooms.
Whether you want to use the flowers in a wreath arrangement, use them in pressed flower crafts or create your own unique potpourri, the first thing we have to do is preserve the blooms!
Let's start with roses. Now I'll be honest, I don't always have good results but I have tried only the hanging of the flowers in a dark area method with these buds. They do dry nicely but the deep reds tend to turn in color to a very dark red, almost brown. Yellows and whites tend to hold up well as do light pinks. Because of the color change, I use red buds in potpourri mixtures. By mixing them with additional dried flowers and adding a dollop of rose fragrance oil, I am still able to utilize these gorgeous flowers.
The rose buds also tend to be very fragile due to drying. If you have managed to dry the buds and they've maintained their form, I would suggest using a preservative to enhance the strength of the flower as well as help to maintain the color and texture of the blossom.
These buds can be used in creating lovely keepsake wreaths that allow you to keep these special flowers with you all year long!
All you need for this rose project is a willow or grapevine wreath. You can decide on the size, which will depend on how many flowers you will be working with. A large bunch of baby's breath (white or beige), statice (white or beige), straw flowers (hunter green) optional, additional miniature rose buds (dried), silk leaves (optional), assorted dried flowers (optional), ribbon (choose color to compliment your roses), moss, and glue gun.
You can place your rose stems in bundles of two or three and tie together with craft twine/wire and then secure them to the wreath. Hot glue the twine/wire to the wreath for extra strength. Cover the twine/wire with a little moss and fill in as necessary with additional flowers and silk leaves.
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