Curious about drying out flowers?

Flower art could be pretty complicated if you have no idea where to start.

Flowers should not be used in resin or any form of art while still live. If you were to do this, they may look healthy for maybe a week or month at most; but after a month, they will start to turn brown and mold could possibly form in your pieces. So, what do you do? You dry them out!

First, there are multiple ways to dry out flowers. I will be showing you two ways that I personally dry out my flowers. One will be drying them out using a microwave and flattening them into a 2-D shape (and a little DIY version of this), while the next will be drying them out while maintaining the 3-dimensional shape.

All products will be linked throughout the post.

Method #1

Microwaving Flowers

Microwaving may be a much easier way since most people have a microwave in their house. I have a DIY method to microwaving that's budget friendly and an "official product" to help microwave flowers.

The first way is a product called "Microfleur".

For this it comes with basically a sandwiched cotton and fabric between plastic to help dry out and flatten your flowers. This is also 100% for pressing flowers. Little warning that if you use this, there will more than likely be an odor once you take the flowers out of the microwave.

To use it, you just need to place your flowers between two pieces of fabric and sandwich it together (My fabric pieces are yellow and purple because I was drying out sunflowers). Then, stick it into the microwave for 30 seconds to a couple of minutes. You may need to take it out and check every-so-often so your flowers do not overheat and burn! After your flower feels like it can snap in an instant and flatten accordingly, you now have prepared flowers to use for your art!

DIY Method

Now, for my DIY way of drying out flowers. You can do the exact same thing as above without buying the product by doing the following:

You will need to take one ceramic plate or bowl (or anything heavy that is microwave safe) with a flat bottom and some paper towels.

You fold one paper towel in half to give it more absorbing room (Feel free to add more paper towels underneath this to absorb more) and place the paper towel in the microwave. Next, take your flowers that you would like to flatten and place it on top of the paper towel and then fold more paper towels and put it on top of those flowers. Last, place your heavy microwave safe object on top of the paper towel.

I normally microwave my flowers for about 30 seconds to a minute and switch out the paper towels once they get too moist to put back in. Then, again, when the flowers feel like they can be cracked at the slightest touch, they are good to use for art.

Method #2

Drying the flowers and having them look like you just bought them

To get this outcome, I highly recommend using "Silica Gel". This is just what I use though. Feel free to use any other brand of gel!

Now, for silica gel, you need to purchase a box that can hold the gel in it. This also takes a couple of days to completely dry your flowers. Conveniently, I found a box that can hold the gel and my dried flowers on top.

Silica gel is pretty simple to use. To start, you pour the bag of gel inside the box. Next, you would take your flowers and place the flower stem-down into the gel and cover the flower thoroughly to get the entire flower dried out. I left a little peaking in the image to make the point that that's where the flower is, but make sure to cover it completely! After doing this, you should leave the flower in the gel from 1 day to a week. This all highly depends on what kind of flower you are drying out.