Pressed Foliage and Flowers from Houseplants (Part 2)

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Today we are checking in with some pressed houseplant foliage and flowers that we did a month ago. Usually, about a month is a good amount of time to leave your houseplant foliage and flowers in the press. I decided to put a brick on it to keep it down, which is always a really good option—nice and heavy.

So today, I’m going to reveal what the foliage and flowers look like. This plant here was the flower that we’re going to be looking at in a minute—the African violet flower. Here’s another little pretty one that I wanted to show you. The difference here is that this one is called a double flower because it has flowers within the flowers themselves. This is also another ruffled one; they also call them ruffled. This one could have the same issue as it has a lot more going on, so when you press it, it doesn’t always look like a flower when you’re done. So, just something to keep in mind when you’re choosing your flowers and foliage.

Okay, here’s the big reveal! I haven’t looked at this since I pressed them a month ago, so we are going to see what they look like.

Okay, so I’m going to carefully do this because you never know what it’s going to look like. Remember that we put them in these coffee filters, so at this point, we’re going to see how they’re doing. This was the coffee filter that was on the end of one just to keep it down.

Now, this was the maiden hair fern foliage, so you have to be very careful with these when taking it out. You can see this is really lovely; it looks dry and still has a really nice color to it. As I mentioned before, you just never know what the colors are going to look like when you’re done. It’s actually very fun because you put them in looking a certain way, and you take them out, and they look completely different, or they may look very much the same. As you can see, this pretty maiden hair fern is pretty much the same.

Okay, let’s see what else we’ve got here. This one was another one; this was a parlor palm. I’m taking this guy out here.

Once again, it looks pretty much the same as it did before. This one appears to be a thicker leaf, so I’m actually going to put this one back in for another month because it still looks to me like it has some moisture in the leaves. The leaves feel very dry, but by looking at it, some of the thicker leaves look like they could be a little moist.

You want to dry them as much as you feel is necessary initially because once you take them out and start using them, if they do have some moisture, they can continue to dry and not be flat, or they could curl, discolor strangely, or become unmanageable because they are in light. So, I’m going to put this one back in, but I think the maiden hair fern is good to go.

As I mentioned in the prior video, there are all kinds of cool things you can do with the pressed flowers once you have them. I’ve made clocks with them and decorated clocks with them, made lampshades, bookmarks, placemats—all kinds of cool things.

Okay, so this is going to go back in now, and we’re going to see what the next thing is. This was an arrowhead leaf. Now, this is a really good example of how different it can look once it dries. You will see that this turned into a pretty much taupe color—a very light brown color. This was actually from an arrowhead vine here, and I had taken off a similar leaf to show you what it looked like before pressing.

This is what it looked like, and I can go ahead and press this one now. Actually, I’m going to press another one. You can see how much different it looks after pressing. This is where the fun comes in; you just have no idea how a leaf or a flower is going to look after it’s been pressed and dried.

This guy is nice and dry, so I’m going to keep him out, and I’ll put this one back in. You can mix and match in here; they’re separated as long as you don’t have them on top of each other, which you wouldn’t want to do anyway. So, I can put this one in along with the palm for some more time and check them both back in a month.

Okay, last but not least is this from a really pretty African violet. It is an African violet flower—another example of how things can look a lot different when you’re done. You want to be really careful with these; they shatter very easily when dry. You can use tweezers as long as they are not too sharp, or they might puncture them.

Here you go—there is the African violet. I’m going to take off this African violet and put this one in again to dry as well. You can see how it originally looked and how it looks now. You can see the very different colorations here, and it’s very lovely. It’s now nice and pressed down too, so that gives you a good idea.

Now I can do other colors of African violets, and I will get completely different results in terms of how the color changes. Some colors don’t change as much, while others change quite a bit. Some colors turn completely different, as you saw with the arrowhead vine.

So, that is my nice collection here. I’ll put them all together except for the palm, which I already put away. You can see how pretty these are. You can use tweezers; sometimes it’s advisable if you can get the plant to stay on the tweezers.

Here you go—here are the really nice results of what we dried already. These can definitely be used for various art projects. I will do a video in the future once I have more things dried here to decorate something and show you how to apply it and what to cover it with to protect it, so it stays nice, and the colors remain vibrant after drying.

That does it for this. As mentioned, I’m going to go ahead and put this guy in and this one in as well.

Close this back up.

You don’t need these because I’ve already used them last time. You want to tighten it as much as possible with big rubber bands or something along those lines, as I mentioned in the prior video. This helps it stay nice and tight—airtight as possible—while allowing a little air in to facilitate drying.

I will be putting the brick back on top and storing this in an out-of-the-way area as it dries.

So, that does it for that, and then these I will be storing. It’s best to put them in paper. They can even be stored in the filters if you want and put them in an envelope somewhere where they will lay flat.

Store them in a dark location until you’re ready to use them. Once you use them, providing you seal them, they will retain the same color over time.

So, that is it for pressed flowers, part two. We’ll be checking in again on these when we make ourselves something. Thank you for stopping by today!

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