James Whitaker
There is a quiet pleasure in opening a drawer in the middle of a grey British January and finding a pansy you pressed the previous July. Pressed flowers turn a plain blank card into something worth keeping, and the craft costs almost nothing beyond a little patience. If you grow your own blooms, so much the better — you will know exactly where every petal came from.
Choosing flowers worth pressing
The single most important rule is to choose thin, flat, single-layered blooms. Anything fleshy, waxy or bulbous will trap moisture and turn brown before it dries. Pick on a dry morning once the dew has lifted but before the midday sun, when petals are at their most supple.
- Ideal: pansies, violas, forget-me-nots, cosmos, sweet peas, buttercups, lavender, single roses (petal by petal), hydrangea florets, hardy geraniums and love-in-a-mist.
- Also lovely: fern fronds, aquilegia, nigella foliage, thin grasses, clover and — for autumn cards — a single small leaf turning colour.
- Better avoided: daffodils, tulips, lilies and anything with a thick calyx. If you long to use them, split them down the stem and press the petals separately.
Pressing for a clean, flat result
You do not need an expensive press. A heavy book and a stack of absorbent paper will do the job beautifully.
- Lay a sheet of blotting paper or plain kitchen roll on a piece of card.
- Arrange your flowers face down, spacing them so that no two pieces touch. Overlap is hard to undo later.
- Cover with a second sheet of blotting paper and another piece of card.
- Stack several of these sandwiches and weight them with books, or screw the plates of a flower press tight.
- Leave somewhere warm and dry for two to four weeks. Check after three days and swap the blotting paper if it feels damp — this is the single best defence against mildew.
If you need results faster, an iron on its lowest setting with no steam, pressed over the paper for ten seconds at a time, will speed things along, as will short bursts in a microwave between two tiles. Both methods demand close attention; the slow way is far more forgiving.
Keeping the colour and avoiding common problems
- Brown, brittle petals: usually caused by heat or direct sunlight. Dry your press in a shaded, airy spot rather than on a sunny windowsill.
- Grey fuzz or a musty smell: the flowers were too wet or too crowded. Start again with fresh blooms and change the paper sooner.
- Curl or shrinkage: thick centres were left intact. Split them next time.
- Fading blues and purples: some colours, notably cornflower and certain delphiniums, simply do fade. Press them early in the season and store the finished cards away from light.
Arranging your greetings card
Use a good-quality card blank — around 300gsm, cream or soft white, with a matching envelope. Handle dried flowers with tweezers; they are far more delicate than they look.
- Lay everything out before you glue anything. Photograph the arrangement on your phone so you can rebuild it if you knock it.
- Work in odd numbers and leave at least a third of the card empty for your handwritten message.
- Fix with a small dot of archival glue, a dab of PVA diluted half and half with water, or a clear glue dot. Less is always more.
- For a lasting finish, brush a very thin coat of diluted PVA over the whole design. It dries clear and stops petals catching in the envelope.
A year of pressing
- Spring: forget-me-nots, primroses, early geraniums and ferns unfurling.
- Early summer: the golden window — sweet peas, nigella, aquilegia, buttercups and wild daisies.
- High summer: cosmos, lavender, single roses and scabious.
- Autumn: hydrangea florets, tiny leaves, seed heads and grasses.
- Winter: a good time to use your stock, and to press hellebore petals if you have them.
Storing and sending your work
Keep spare pressed flowers flat between sheets of tissue paper in a cardboard box, away from damp and daylight; a biscuit tin with a sachet of silica gel works well in a British climate. Finished cards should be stored the same way until you write in them. When posting, choose a slightly larger envelope or a rigid board marked to be kept flat — a pressed cosmos will not survive a sorting office unscathed.
Give them freely. A card made from flowers grown in your own patch, pressed on a summer afternoon, is the sort of small, generous gift people keep for years.
