Category: Tutorials

How to press flowers and leaves

Today we are going to learn how to press flowers. Pressed leaves and flowers are good for cards and crafts because if you press them properly, most flowers and leaves will keep their color for some time.

The first step to pressing flowers and leaves, is to (obviously) choose your leaves/flowers.

FUN FACT! You can press more than just flowers and leaves, but today I’m gonna show you how to press these. …..haha, get it? 🙂

The time in the day you pick your leaves and flowers is important. Make sure when you take your leaves/flowers, they are dry. Like after the sun has evaporated the morning dew, but before the evening rain shower. Also the leaves or flowers you take, should be relatively thin and not super thick. It’s OK if the flowers or leaves are thin and they’re in a 3-D shape, but the big, thick. Leaves and flowers just do not press well.

Once you have your things to press, take a heavy, thick book that is not important to you, (you can use multiple) and open up to the very last pages. Then, grab two tissues and place the first one on the page that you’ve opened up to. Once you’ve done that, you can take your flowers and leaves that you’ve decided to press and arrange them on the tissue in the way that you would like them to be dried. FUN FACT! Once they are pressed, most leaves and flowers are as thin, or thinner than paper! Here is how I laid my flowers out. The way you lay them out is how they are going to look once they’re finished pressing.

After you’ve laid out all of your flowers and leaves, gently place your second tissue on top of them and quickly close the book. If you have more heavy books, immediately put them on top of the book that you have your leaves or flowers in.

Most leaves and flowers take up to two weeks to a month to dry. It’s best to check on your leaves and flowers every week by opening the book and gently peeling them off the tissue to make sure they don’t stick. Once your flowers and or leaves are paper dry and paper thin, they are finished pressing! Here is how some of my flowers looked once they were pressed.

I hope you enjoyed today’s post! Keep a lookout for my herb drying rack tips and tricks coming soon!

You can use pressed flowers and leaves to decorate journal pages like I did here. You can also use them on cards which can be useful especially because Mother’s and Father’s Days are coming up!


DIY Herb Rack! (Herb Drying Part 2)

Herb Drying part 2

Today we are going to make a drying rack for the herbs we bundled last time! This activity is fun, useful, and can finally give a use to that big cardboard box sitting in your house that you don’t have the heart to throw away.

To dry herbs for their flavor and aroma, you have to make sure that you do not dry your herbs in the sun. Otherwise, the herbs that you are drying might lose their taste and scent. 
Fun(ish) FACT! Some herbs can take up to 3 to 4 weeks to completely dry!

Here is how I made my herb rack:

Taking inspiration from paper bag ideas, I took a big cardboard box, and hot glued bamboo skewers (you could use most sticks) across the bottom half of the box to hang my herbs from. FUN FACT! One of the best ways to dry herbs is to hang them because it allows good air flow between the herbs. Next, I taped the top flaps of the box to provide more shade on the drying herbs.

To make a good use of the extra space, I decided to make a second row at the top of the box with my bamboo skewers. This could also help if you are drying longer herbs. (remember, you can use basically any type of sticks). To start, I made marks where I wanted my sticks to go. Then I started gluing.

While I was hot gluing, I had to make sure that the bamboo skewers were secured firmly at the ends. This is important because if your sticks fall down, all of your drying herbs could get crushed. You can see here that I ran out of normal hot glue so I ended up using some decorative silver hot glue.

Close up of one end of a hot glued stick.

Once I was done gluing all of my sticks in place, I gave them 1 minute to make sure all the glue had dried. After that, all the important parts of the herb drying rack are done!

  • SELFIE!

Now you can put your herbs out to dry on your new herb drying rack that you made yourself!

  • You can hang your herbs at the top or the bottom.
The top row you can use to hang the longer herbs stems and the lower ones can be used to hang the short herb stems.


Keep a lookout for my next post about how to decorate your new herb drying rack tomorrow!

Drying herbs! (Herb Drying Part 1)

Lemon Balm bundle

Yesterday, it was good weather outside, so I decided to harvest and trim some of our lemon balm. To make sure that the cuttings would keep, they had to be dried. FUN FACT! many herbs taste stronger when they are dried! Here I am using lemon balm as an example, but most herbs can be dried like this. 

First, I washed the lemon balm cuttings to get rid of any dirt. Then, after they were dry, I made Bunches of lemon balm cuttings that were about the same size. FUN FACT! Lemon balm is a good herb for making tea! 😋 After that, I took a rubber band (I have leftover rainbow loom bands from craft projects so I used those), and tightly wound them around the top stems of the lemon balm cuttings.

Making bundles using rainbow loom

Next, I took some spare paper clips and unfolded them like this:

( you can use big ones or small ones)

After I had prepared the paper clips, I took one the smaller end of one of the paper clips and slipped it in the rubber band that was holding the steps together, and there you go! Some Lemon balm cuttings (or most other herb cuttings) ready to dry! FUN FACT! Lots of herbs like the mint family, rosemary, etc, like to be trimmed and grow even better with proper pruning! Stay tuned for a post about trimming/pruning herbs!

Keep a lookout for my DIY herb drying rack post tomorrow!