After doing this DIY for my sister-in-law with her wedding bouquet, I am now obsessed with this concept and think it would be beautiful to do with any meaningful flowers, or even if you just need some unique wall art with flowers you get from the grocery store!
I obviously have babies on the mind being pregnant…but it would also be super adorable with “baby’s first flowers” to put up in a little girl’s nursery with flowers that were brought to the hospital at her birth, or the first flowers she got from her dad.
This DIY is mostly simple, there is just a bit of wait time, and you have to be patient with yourself when arranging the flowers at the end because it takes some trial and error.
Materials:
- fresh flowers or greenery (I used my sister-in-law’s wedding bouquet)
- big books, think textbooks or dictionaries (I used 4)
- heavy objects (I used cases of seltzer)
- parchment paper
- a floating frame (we used this one) or shadowbox frame
Instructions:
1. Gather your materials and prep the flowers.Depending on the type of flowers or greenery, this might require more attention or not. I pressed my sister-in-law’s flowers the day after her wedding but as long as they’re still fresh you can wait a few days. Trim any huge stems that won’t fit into the books and separate out each sprig or stem. Keep in mind that depending on the type of flower, not all of the pieces will come out pressed beautifully…some of mine had weird seeds in them that exploded and made some of the flowers look brown and moldy. So my advice is to do more than what you think you need if you don’t do the whole bouquet.
2. Press the flowers.
Open a book and line it on both sides with a single piece of parchment paper so there’s a crease where the book binds together.
Lay one or more flowers (depending on how big they are, just as long as they aren’t touching) on the parchment paper making sure no leaves or petal are folded.
Flip the pages. Take a few pages, maybe 10-20 depending on the thickness of your flowers, and flip them over so the parchment paper and flower is pressed between the pages.
3. Repeat steps 2-5 until your book is full and/or it won’t shut or you have run out of flowers. Move onto another book if you have florals left.
4. Put your books somewhere they can live for about two weeks and won’t really be disturbed. I put ours in our cool basement (I don’t know how temperature will affect this project, but I would say opt for a cool, dry place over anything else.)
5. Stack anything heavy on top of the books to really PRESS the flowers. I used cases of seltzer. Those also lived there for the duration of the project.
6. Wait about 10-14 days. Longer is fine too. Right after my my sister-in-law’s wedding in November, we had the holiday craziness so I didn’t end up taking them out of the books for about 2 months.
7. Open the books and carefully take the flowers out.They will be flat and very fragile.
8. Arrange the flowers on your frame.
We used this one. Depending on what type of frame you use, this might be different, but play around with the arrangement until you figure out what you like. I tired to replicate the look of the bouquet, but you can do individual stems or sprigs in a line, or just flower heads. This step is a little tricky because you are placing the flowers face down so you can’t actually see the arrangement until you put it all together and flip it over. To help with this, I placed my frame on top of our old acrylic coffee table so I could peek underneath at the other side as I went…would also work on top of a glass table.
9. Add any extras.
I saved the ribbon wrap and pins from my sister-in-law’s wedding bouquet as well as a scrap of tulle from her wedding dress (we all hit the dance floor hard), and I tried them in the arrangement, but decided I liked it better without them. I do like the sentiment of including these extras in your arrangement, just depends on the look you’re going for!
10. Reassemble your frame & enjoy your new piece of art!
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What do you think?