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Show Preserve beautiful flowers by pressing By CHERIE HUBER The flower season in Davis County has started in earnest now. Shades of red, yellow and blue color the landscape as the flowers seem to try to make up for a long dark winter. IF YOU ever pressed flowers as a child in school you know how interesting it can be. With the revival of some of the older art forms, flower pressing is back in vogue again. Now you can do it on a larger scale and be right in on the "in" thing. PRESSING flowers hasn't changed that much since our grandmothers pressed special flowers in their Bibles. Best of all most of what you need is still growing free around your lawn and in your garden. Pressed flowers are showing up on stationery, station-ery, candles and pictures in boutiques across the country. You can make the same sort of thing at home for yourself and for gifts. With ' those ideas in mind, you can start collecting and drying the kinds and colors of flowers you would like to use. THE TELEPHONE book is the best way to press flowers' because the unglazed paper absorbs the moisture well and telephone books are usually thick enough. Shiny magazine paper pap-er will not work well. Newspapers can also be used. When the project is finished the papers can be refolded and recycled to the Boy Scouts. Flowers from your garden should be picked when they are at the peak of their bloom but late enough in the day that the dew has dried. Flowers like the buttercup, daisy, and pansie can be dried whole. Snip the stem as close to the flower head as possible so no stem line is left to wrinkle the picture. Thicker flowers like the rose, tulip, marigold and aster need to be taken apart and dried petal by petal. LATER THE flower can be reconstructed or the individual petals can be worked into a new design. Always pick flowers in good condition to press. Don't forget buds, leaves and grasses. Take a critical look at weeds too. Sometimes their tiny flowers are just what is needed to finish a design. Pressing the flowers can be an ongoing delight. de-light. Open the old telphone books at half inch thicknesses and arrange the flowers on the page. Different flowers can be dried together as long as they are of the same size and thickness. Weight the telephone book with a heavy board so that there is even pressure on the book and all the pages are flat. Place the book where it is THE BLOSSOMS are dry when they feel smooth and are easy to remove from the page. The telephone book can be used again if allowed to dry for about a week between batches batch-es of flowers. If you are using newspapers, use the same layering system and weigh securely. An extra layer of typing paper will protect the flowers from the newspaper ink. The typing paper can be used over and over again also. Remove dried flowers from the paper using tweezers. It is important to protect the dried flowers from moisture, dirt and dust andfcny oils that may be on your fingers. Store the dried petals in crush-proof boxes until you have enough to complete a project. Add only completely com-pletely dried flowers to the storage box. One damp petal can cause the entire box of petals to spoil. ONCE A good supply of petals have been gathered it is time to begin a design. Lay the grasses and flowers out on the background material first, centering the design to allow for a frame. Once the arrangement is completed, lift each piece, apply a small dab of glue to the back of the petal and gently return it to its place in the design. The flowers are fragile and need to be handled carefully. After the glue has dried, cover the design with glass and place in the frame. When the picture is displayed it should be out of direct sunlight and away from the direct blast of swamp coolers. OTHER FLOWERS that can be pressed well include bleeding heart, lily of the valley, grape hyacinth, geranium and larkspur. |