Air drying is probably the most common method used to dry flowers and is certainly one of the oldest and most traditional methods of drying flowers, which needs the least resources.

Many guides will recommend only using heavy books, but we’ve found that you can use almost any book - just place heavier books on top! Just make sure the weight is evenly distributed across the area of the book being used to press.

Preserving Your Bouquet: Which Method Is Best? 

Pressed flowers can be framed, put in a photo album or scrapbook, or used to personalise phone or laptop cases. For the more experienced crafters they can be used in resin projects or even as raw materials in printmaking or fabric dying. When using pressed flowers in papercrafts, make sure to use acid free archival paper to slow down the degradation process. If you want to combine with family photos, drawings or newspaper clippings you can buy “paper preservation spray,” or “deacidification spray” to neutralise the PH and preserve your crafts. There are two main methods you can use to preserve your flowers: drying and pressing. Drying a flower will retain its shape while removing moisture that would lead to decomposition. Pressing flowers removes this moisture by literally pressing it out of the flower, leaving them paper thin. The waves beside them danced– Along with flowers, waves too are gifted with the human quality to dance.

Vase drying is the ideal method for larger blooms as you’ll need to manipulate them less and they can basically dry themselves! This method can be great for achieving a little more vibrancy than simply air drying, while still being very low effort. All you need to do is leave the stems in a few inches of water and leave them until dry. You may have had this accidentally happen with a decorative bouquet left unattended.They stretched in never-ending line– the flowers are spread everywhere in a line, significance of vastness is explained. Alliteration: Alliteration is the repetition of similar sounds, is applied for the word ‘h’, in the words – high and hills. Personification and Simile: I wander’d lonely as a cloud– The first line makes nice use of personification and simile. The poet assumes himself to be a cloud (simile) floating in the sky. When Wordsworth says in the second line ‘I’ (poet as a cloud) look down at the valleys and mountains and appreciate the daffodils; it’s the personification, where an inanimate object (cloud) possesses the quality of a human enabling it to see the daffodils.

Learning how to press flowers without creating flower origami takes a little trial and error, as the transformation is more dramatic than drying. If you’re planning on pressing a special occasion bouquet, have a few practice presses with garden flowers, or a less sentimental bouquet. For more delicate blooms such as orchids or lilies, pressing is the recommended method. Pressing Flowers With Books William Wordsworth wrote Daffodils on a stormy day in spring, while walking along with his sister Dorothy near Ullswater Lake, in England. He imagined that the daffodils were dancing and invoking him to join and enjoy the breezy nature of the fields. Dorothy Wordsworth, the younger sister of William Wordsworth, found the poem so interesting that she took ‘Daffodils’ as the subject for her journal. The poem is written as an appreciation of daffodils, and contains six lines in four stanzas. This process does take a couple of days, but the flowers look delightful while drying and can add a wonderful old-world cottage feel to your home. Many learn how to dry flowers using this method because the process itself is so charming. To do this, lay your flowers between two pieces of parchment paper. Turn on your iron, and hold it over the flowers for around 10 seconds. Let them cool, then take a look at the results!In short, there isn't one “best method.” This really depends on what you plan on doing with your bouquet, what kind of flowers you have, and how you wish to preserve them. If you want to keep them three dimensional, with long stems- opt for air or vase drying, depending on your blooms. If you wish to frame them for longevity, opt for a book or flower press, depending on the space you have available and the size of bloom you are pressing. Hopefully our guide has given you the advice and resources to make this choice.