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Flowers for Crafts.
A crafty way to bring your garden indoors.
Collecting and drying seeds. How about saving seeds from your very own garden to give to friends and family to plant next year. For Seed Saving Click Here !
Growing your own flowers to use in crafts allows you to preserve the beautiful blooms from your flower gardens. Not only that, the best luxury bouquets are usually those made from flowers the flower arranger grew on his/her own garden. This is because the attachment a gardener shares with her/his flowers is usually reflected on the actual flower arrangement.
If your thinking of crafting with flowers from your garden; here are a list of excellent flowers to grow. Listed beside each flower are some craft ideas to get you started.
Sunflowers-Baskets and wreath crafts. Pansies-Pressed for card making and scrapbooking. Yarrow-Pressed for scrapbooking. Roses-Swags, wreaths, and dried floral arrangements. Eucalyptus-Use in wreaths, swags and dried floral arrangements. Delphiniums-Dried flower arrangements. Peonies-Great in baskets, wreaths, and dried floral arrangements. Gourds-Make great birdhouses and look great painted.
Some crafts work well with fresh or dried flowers. Fresh flower crafts are always a pleasure to have; but might only last a couple of weeks, and can be more costly to keep. Dried flower crafts allow an everlasting flower craft that can last for many years.
Here are two methods for drying your flowers.
Air drying - hanging or rack drying Easy to do. Hanging larger flowers and bunches or laying smaller flower heads on drying screens in a warm but dry place. Depending on drying conditions; it can take up to 2 weeks for drying time.
Dessicants - Silica gel Place silica gel in a container with a lid about 2/3rds full. Put flowers on top of gel with a sprinkle of gel on top and around petals. Drying time is usually quicker than air drying. Borax or sand can be used instead of Silica gel.
For more information! More great gardening topics and resources.
