Mounting pressed flowers?

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Jacob

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Dec 9, 2004
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NY
I took on this project for a long time customer who insisted he wanted a very unusual presentation for his pressed flowers. We worked out the details on his very strange frame, which of course due to the stress, etc., I feel I'm certainly not getting my due for this one. (I'm sure you can relate) Anyhow, the presentation is not the point. It would make this question way too long to go into that.

The point: The last step in this is to mount his flat, dried, pressed (and brittle) flowers to mat board and press it under glass. Now, I have an idea of what I will do, (I have mounted such things before) but I've learned my lesson in the past to get as many different approaches as you can, since someone probably has a better option for any given situation. Since this will be pressed directly under the glass, I'd rather not spray the flowers to preserve them. Too much risk of transference. But as for actually adhering or fastening something like this to a matboard, what do you guys do? These are still in one piece, but I must admit are a bit brittle and I don't think they'd take much abuse.

Thanks all.
 
If you could use a fabric with a polyester batting
behind it, stresses on the flowers could be lessened and they would be less likley to fall apart.

Hugh
 
G'day Jacob,
We have numerous flower presevation clients here across Oz, and I offer the following observations.

Mostly they freeze dry (or silica dry) the flowers, then reassemble into a lower profile type arrangement on the backing mat.

The biggest one here uses hot glue, and for all accounts it looks like a fine method.

But they're not pressed, and this would make them really fragile (and they are normally flaky enough !)

What is going to happen when you press the glass (as they want) against the flowers . . . not the best thing in any case to do this, but these things are just going to flake to heck and fall through the frame package, aren't they ?

Maybe they have a few spare pressings, and you can give them a demo of what's going to happen before trying it on the actual item ?
Just put them on a mat and smack some glass on top, press, then lift and see.

It's funny how some people can imagine something being done a certain way, then imagine someone else somewhere can do it for them.

IF you do go ahead at their request, I'd suggest giving the pressings no room to move by having a very solid backing board to eliminate any deviation of the mat against the glass etc.
Maybe 1/4" mdf over a 1/8"foamcore and mat(s). Nice and stiff. And use UV glass.
 
Guys, thanks. Just to be more clear, I should say they were dried flat, pressed in a book. They are now already laying under a piece of glass, so they're quite flat. Each one is a single piece and won't be arranged together. For non-archival framing jobs, I have to say I'm a big fan of hot glue or white glue.
 
I press my own flowers and frame them in small 6x6 frames using up my scrap moulding when I do a local art/craft show. It's sort of a loss leader just to get people to know about me.

But anyhow, what I do is take a toothpick and put a speck of white glue on the mat and use a pallette (sp?) knife to slide under and pick up then gently drop the flower on top of the glue. I put the thick part of the flower over the glue. The flowers I use are freshly pressed, maybe only a month old so they're not old and brittle like yours probably are.

I don't know if that's any help or not.
 
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