Drying flowers

B. Newman

SGF, Supreme Grumble Framer
Joined
Sep 5, 2001
Posts
4,855
Loc
Kodak, Tn. USA
My husband's niece got married Saturday and now they'd like to dry the bouquet and then have it framed. Anyone ever done this (dried it that is)?

I know about using silica-gel to dry flowers, but that would involve taking it apart completely for drying, then re-assembling the bouquet. Neither she nor I want to do this.

Her florist told her about the silica-gel. He didn't know (or wouldn't divulge) another florist who did this kind of work.

Should I start looking for florists to do this - or what?
 
Wish I could help you but I don't have a clue. Will be very interested in what you find out as this question has arisen a few times and we have had to turn the customer away. Not the best business practice and I refuse to do it again if I can possibly avoid it. Good luck!

Julie
 
Dried flowers were something I always tried very hard to talk customers out of framing. And wedding boquets are the worst!

(Whatever happened to the tradition of tossing the boquet? I'd like to see a revival of it just so no framer would ever again be asked to deal with one.)

Couples get all caught up in the glow of the moment. How important is the boquet going to be five years from now?

My best suggestion is to lay the boquet on a nice base and put a glass dome over it. Hide some little packets of silica gel in amongst the leaves.

I don't suppose you could interest them in framing a nice photograph of the boquet???

Kit
 
Didn't Martha have an article about sugaring roses? You could frame a picture then eat the bouquet!?

Art supply center should be able to get you some silica. (a previous house mate was an art professor and she used to dry flowers in a bucket of the stuff. Kept the color of the flowers and looked great) I have hung my daughter's 1st grade father/daughter dance roses by hanging them upside down and letting them dry naturally. But then I bought pale pink roses because the drying deepens the color and from past experience found out that the purple roses looked black when air dried!

Get thee to a library and do a search on floral drying!

Googled it and here is an article , check out the part about Borax and corn meal!

Maybe after they are dried you could modify Martha's sugaring reipe adn shellac/varnish the flowers to keep better.
 
We do some work for a local company (Floral Keepsakes) who specializes in dried floral arrangements. I get the impression that it is not as easy as just throwing the petals into a microwave to dry them out.

I would imagine that even after they are dried, they may to continue to wither and turn brown and look more like a compost pile than a bouquet after a few years.

Try to find an expert so you don’t get taken off her Christmas mailing list.
 
betty: do an archive search. Hugh Phibbs--Preservator on here--talked about this a coupla years ago; something about creating a vacuum in the framing package. Honestly, I forget.

We've tried the freeze dried thingy, spraying with all sortsa stuff, etc. Don't know if they held up over the years or not. Frankly I'd be concerned with outgassing with anything sprayed on them.

Our own flowers were done and they dried up in about a year. But that was 14 yrs ago before I got into this business so don[t know what the framer did back then. Didn't work tho.

Good luck
 
How about drying just a few flowers from the bouquet and arranging them flat, along with a photo of the entire thing? i.e. photo, flowers around it. I once had to frame every flower in a funeral spray, took it apart and arranged them flat...dried in silica gel. Then the guy insisted on mailing it to a family member. I can only imagine what it looked like by the time it got there! OY! Never again!
 
If you really still want to do it, despite many advices to the contrary:

Well, first you have to make sure they are VERY dry and have kept a reasonably good flowery shape.

Now, I read long time ago that the best way to preserve such dead, dry roses (in your case: from shedding all over and under whatever glazing you use), is to use hair-spray (Mega-hold!).

This will help keep the petals from flaking and falling to pieces. Of course, you can't just spray them and fame them immediately (outgassing).

But, I bet there will still be some shedding, especially if the finished frame and roses are moved around a lot.
 
Thanks all. These were my feelings as well. (I really didn't want to frame a real bouquet.)

This is what I've suggested - take the bouquet back to the florist who did the wedding and request a silk bouquet to match, and we'll frame that.

Besides, even if you get it dried satisfactorily, who knows what it will look like in 2-3 years with this East Tennessee humidity! And silk flowers would last forever! (That's my story and I'm sticking to it!)
 
That is a very wise course of action. In Japan,
they make highly sealed frames with oxygen absorber packets (Ageless: as is found in all sorts of food packages), for framing dried flowers, but they are likely to suffer from light
exposure, expecially if the climate in the package
is not totally oxygen-free. The fabric flowers
should be given a UV filtering glazing, since
silk looses 1/2 its strength in 220 hours of
exposure to sunlight. If they have a synthetic
silk, that may last longer.

Hugh
 
On another tack, why not suggest the actual bouquet be replicated in silk flowers. We did that with my wife's bouquet. Worked out beautifully.
 
I suggest preserving with glycerine. The blossoms don't shrivel and crumple like dried flowers.

Framing a bouquet doesn't sound fun to me. That is what glass dome display cases were made for.
 
I have a customer who dries wedding bouqets all the time and I make frames for her to put them in. I remember her saying that some flowers dry really well and some won't.
She also said that she needs the bouquet very soon. Even straight after the wedding celebrations are over can be too late. The next day is way too late.
I have recently seen one of the jobs and the flowers are holding together really well, but they look brown and very awful.
I think the silk version sounds like a great idea!
 
If they really want and insist on preserving it:

How about a jar of Formaldehyde....??

And it looks almost like a shadowbox....
 
Uh, I think that's what Hugh and I said, I think... [Confused]

Serves me right for not reading the last couple responses. Oh, well. Sorry. I was too eager to share and too hasty to read to the end.
shrug.gif
 
Somehow I have my doubts that "silk" flowers are actually SILK. Probably some kind of cheap imitation - which of course would probably last a lot longer than real silk!
 
My mother used to dry all sorts of flowers just beautifully, and intact in the arrangement as is. She used a silica sand that had absorbant beads and would cover the flowers slowly and carefully making sure the silica got into every nook and crany. I think it was called Flower Dry. She used a lot of it but it was also dryable in the oven for use again. She dried a rose bouquet that was my grandmothers and bought her a domed glass cover on a walnut base to display it in. That was over 30 years ago, my grandmother has since died, and my mother still has the bouquet...faded but still intact. The key was to have enough sand and a large enough container.
 
Ah, Kit, but nowadays, the bride doesn't throw her actual bouquet- that is doing the unthinkable! It is whisked away with the wedding dress (sure it is) while a smaller bouquet is tossed. You know, one the florist made up to be a smaller version of her bouquet.

I think a smart florist came up with this idea.
thumbsup.gif


Good luck, Betty. I've never understood the need to frame this kind of thing. I plucked petals from mine and pressed them, made a pic out of them to save, and called it good. If they disentegrate, I have pictures!!
 
We make lots of convex glass for flower ladies across Australia, so have gleaned a lot of info re this.

There are 2 popular methods to dry flowers (3D) for display; freeze drying and silica gel crystals.

Freeze drying is arguably the best and most consistent method.

I think the ones that use silica gel generally don't have access to a freeze drier. (Apparently there are only half a dozen of these machines here in Australia).

That said, one of my biggest clients (that used to use silica gel, and in the past 12 months got a freeze drier) now says that it is highly cariogenic to dry the used SG crystals, once they've been fully absorbed.

They used to dry the crystals in a microwave, made a heck of a smell.

Generally using new silica gel is ok, just drying it is bad (and apparently illegal, I was told, under Occupational Health & Safety legislation nowadays).

A good tupperware container is best. Most using this (& freeze dry) method disassemble, dry, and re assemble on a board to the best reproduction of the bouquet as possible (many take pics for this purpose).

It is a specialist job, most framers here in Oz wouldn't have the time, knowledge, tools, or (especially) desire to muck around with / do this, and usually work with a wedding bouquet preserver to get the best result.
 
We have framed flowers that have been brought to us already dried. They were dried with a good quality cat litter (before the cat uses it). I don't think that the type that forms lumps would work as well. The flowers could be layered or the entire bunch done at once. This will dry but will not preserve and the color will fade in a short time, The only way that I know to preserve the color is to keep them out of light but then no one can see them.

Jack Cee
 
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