How to Air-Dry Flowers
by Monica Resinger
http://creativehomeezine.netfirms.com
Air-drying flowers is a simple, fun hobby that can save you
money by providing free material to make dried flower
decorations for your home or to give as gifts.
It's very simple to air-dry flowers. All you need is a place
to hang them out of direct light, rubber bands and either
paperclips or florist wire. I have used wooden pegged coffee
cup hangers and pieces of lattice attached to the kitchen
wall as places to air-dry flowers. You can also insert cup
hooks into a wall and use those.
Once you have a place to hang them set up, you can begin to
find flowers to dry. Hopefully you have a variety of flowers
growing in your yard to experiment with. If not, you can
find wildflowers growing alongside roads or in forests. If
you are using these flowers, be sure to take care of the
plants you take the flowers from. This ensures that there is
plenty of plant growth for insects, birds and other wildlife
to use.
Some flowers that have air-dried well for me are: Yarrow
(Achillea millefolium), pompon Dahlias (Dahlia hortensis),
Poppy seed heads (Papaver somniferum), Roses (Rosa),
Marjoram (Origanum vulgare),Delphinium, Larkspur (Consolida
ambigua), Lavender (Lavandula Augustifolia), African
Marigold (Tagetes erecta), Strawflower (Helichrysum
bracteatum), Globe Thistle (echinops ritro), Cornflower
(Centaurea cyanus), Statice (Limonium sinuatum), Globe
amaranth (Gomphrena globosa), and Love-in-a-mist (Nigella
damascena) seed heads.
To find flowers that air-dry well, it's good practice to
experiment. If it doesn't dry well, you gain the knowledge
not to use it next time. Sometimes, an air-dried flower that
doesn't look good to one person may look pleasing to another.
With most flowers, the best stage to dry them is when they
are just beginning to open. Depending on the flower, if you
hang it too late, the petals will fall off. You will learn
this as you experiment. Others, you will want to wait until
the seed head is developed because this is the decorative part.
The best time to cut flowers for drying is late morning
after the due has dried and on a dry day. I like to take a
wicker basket with a handle and my scissors with me and take
a walk around the yard snipping what looks appealing.
Once you have your flowers picked, you can prepare them for
air- drying. To do this, bundle eight to ten stems with a
rubber band at the cut end of the flowers. The rubber band
works especially well because as the flowers dry, the stems
will shrink and the rubber band will shrink to the
appropriate size of the bunch. Now you can insert an
unraveled paper clip or florist wire inside the rubber band
and bend it to form a hook that the bunch can hang over a
peg, piece of lattice or hook. Hang the bunch of flowers
upside down and depending on the weather, they will probably
take anywhere from one to three weeks to dry completely. You
can tell they are dry completely when they feel crisp to the
touch.
Air-drying flowers make a fabulous decoration by themselves,
but when they are dry, you can take them down and make dried
flower arrangements, Christmas ornaments, dried flower
wreaths and more.
©, 2001, Monica Resinger
About the Author:
Monica Resinger is the Editor of Creative Home, a fun, twice
or three times a week ezine that is jam-packed with Creative
Homemaking information like how to organize your home, cook
mouth-watering meals, entertain your friends and family,
decorate your home, plant a garden, use herbs, try a new
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Reprint permission: This article may be reprinted in its
entirety as long as the above bio and this note are included
and a courtesy copy of the publication is sent to
Plantldy98@aol.com.
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