Drying and Preserving Flowers for Resin

Give a girl a bunch of flowers and it will last a week.... but give her a resin bangle filled with flowers and it will last forever!

Flowers are really important in our lives. We use them to landscape our gardens, as tokens of our love and affection, we eat and brew some, and we enjoy the fragrance of others. There are so many ways we use them.

So it makes sense that we'd want to preserve them forever in resin. Whether it's a posy of flowers from the garden, a bunch of flowers from Mother's Day or a wedding bouquet, using them in resin or other crafts is a great way of remembering that occasion or the person who gave them to you.

Unfortunately, you can't take a beautiful fresh flower and place it in resin. It will become brown, sludgy or mouldy in a short time. Flowers and other organic materials need to be thoroughly dried before they can be embedded in resin. So, here are the techniques I use.

I've tried a few different drying methods and some of my results have been really good and some not so good. I want to share both the successes and the failures with you. 

The methods I've used to dry flowers and petals are: 

• silica gel 
• salt 
• a dehydrator 
• microwave flower press kit

The first three methods keep the flower's or the petal's shape so that they're 3D. The last one presses them flat.

At the back: medium silica gel beads; large silica gel beads, small microwave flower press.
In the front: fine silica gel sand, large microwave oven flower press

Drying Flowers and Petals to Keep their Shape

The first thing I tried was silica gel. The process is really simple. I use a microwave-safe container when I'm using silica gel because I need quick results and the microwave will certainly give you that. You just place a layer of desiccant in the bottom of the container - I found that 1-2cm (1/2"-1") was sufficient. Then place your blooms and carefully spoon over another layer of desiccant as thick as the first layer.

Set the container aside and let the silica gel get to work - it can take a few days for the flowers to dry out. It varies from flower to flower. My preferred flower-drying silica gel includes drying times for many different flowers in the instructions.

Or, if you're in a hurry like me and only need petals, place the container into the microwave on 50% power for 60 seconds.

Check the petals to see how they're going ...

... If they feel like parchment, they're done. 

... They'll be fragile but they shouldn't be brittle. If they crumble, you've overcooked them - shorten the time for the next batch.

... If they feel silky, they're not done yet. Continue drying them at 10-second intervals (always at 50% power) until they feel papery all over. 

Each flower will be different - fleshy flowers will take longer and some flowers will darken and some will fade. Some won't be successful so it's a good idea to record your results for future reference.

Once they're dried, use a soft brush to dust them off and store them in an airtight container with a little bit of silica gel to keep them dry until you're ready to use them.

Now, to the Results....

The Failures!

You can see from the photos below that not all silica gels will give you equal results. Each of the three Silica gel products I tried preserved the shape and colour of the petals really well but the first brand I tried had large round beads. Notice how deeply dimpled these mint leaves are.

These leaves were dried with Dri Splendor which I found in the dried flower section at Michael's. Unfortunately, the results were the same whether I set the container aside for a few days to work its magic or whether I sped up the drying process in the microwave - pockmarked botanicals!

These crystals aren't my favourite for this purpose but they'll be great for putting in containers with my dried flowers to keep them dry.

I also tried some finer crystals that I sourced from a local supplier. These orangey-coloured beads are much smaller in size and they turn a greeny-blue when they've reached their moisture-holding capacity. Even these smaller beads left dimples.

And whilst I'm disappointed with the dimpling, the colours are really well preserved.

The Successes!

Next, I tried Activa's Flower Drying Art and finally, I got the results I was looking for. Petals were beautifully preserved. They were covered with a fine layer of silica dust but this is easily brushed away with a soft brush.

I also tried cooking salt (aka kosher salt) and I found this worked almost as well as the Activa silica gel. The only difficulty I had was that the salt clumped around the entire petal and it was sometimes difficult to chip the salt away without damaging the petal. But the results were excellent and it's extremely economical.

Petals dried in the dehydrator preserved the colours (and sometimes intensified them) better than any of the other methods. They became more leathery and less brittle and generally twisted so they are better suited to potpourri or wedding confetti rather than for embedding in resin. It took a few hours for them to dry but the advantage was being able to do so many all at once.

With many wedding venues and churches banning traditional paper confetti these days, the dehydrator drying method is a great way to make your own eco-friendly confetti to toss over the newlyweds. 

If you're going to use the petals for potpourri, add a few drops of essential oil to the petal mix to give them a fragrance boost. If you're using a dehydrator, the instructions should give you a guide as to what setting you should use and how long you should dry the petals and flowers for.

Pressing Flowers in the Microwave

Now, on to the Microfleur. This is such a good invention. You can press flowers in the microwave without a Microfleur but the Microfleur makes pressing flowers really easy.

You simply lay out your petals (I didn't press the whole flower, just the individual petals)...

 

 ....and sandwich them between the cotton, the wool felt and the plates. There are clips to hold it all together. 

Then it goes into the microwave at 50% power. That's really important. 

To see what happens when you use full power, scroll down to the bottom of the post. 😞

I found that the large Microfleur needed longer - generally 1 minute to start with - whereas the smaller 5" Microfleur worked in as little as 30 seconds.

Check how the petals feel - they should be papery but not brittle. If needed, microwave in short bursts until they are completely dry. Once again, keep records of what you do - it really helps. Notice how the petals have changed colour - the pink petals became mauve.

Here's a geranium from my garden.

The colour change was really dramatic! This geranium was really difficult to remove and it's really fragile - I had to use a toothpick to gently ease it off the cloth. 

This wedding bouquet was full of bright tropical colours...

But when dried, it took on all these lovely soft vintagey colours.... you'd never guess they were the same flowers!

The colours almost always change and the only way to know what will happen to your flowers is to test them out. Here are some of the results I got:

Most of the strong colours became deeper after drying and the light colours became paler.

But vibrant yellows and oranges stayed true to their original colour.

Some of the reds went black and some of the whites I dried became a little brown... but nowhere near as brown as this wrist corsage that was dried naturally.

If you've stuck around this long, you deserve to see my disasters too! Here's my first set of felt pads and cotton liners - charred into oblivion by forgetting to use 50% power. Fleshy flowers and 100% power in the microwave actually caused the cotton liner to catch fire... which was a bit scary!!

And here's my second - singed, but still useable! Luckily, you can buy replacement pads. These are the 5" pads but you can also get replacements for the 9" Microfleur.

So now you've seen how I do it, go raid your garden... or take a walk in your neighbourhood to see what you can find... and experiment!

And of course, this is a great way to preserve a special bouquet. Once the petals are dry, pop them into resin and you have a bouquet that will last forever!

And now that you know how to dry your flowers, you need to know how to treat them before you put them in resin. See this video for 5 Ways to Seal Dried Petals Ready for Embedding in Resin.

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Happy Resining!


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