I am also taking another wonderful ecourse...Romancing the Paper by Rachel emilie Jackson. Rachel is a mixed media artist from England. She is a regular contributor to Somerset magazine by Stampington and the Craft Stamper. I found her quite by accident in blogland about a year ago and fell in love with her work. It has such a romantic feeling. Watching her videos each week is a treat. She has such a soft voice with that wonderful English accent. Beautiful music is playing in the back round: all of this just really draws me in.
We began the first week learning to dry flowers. She suggests two ways...the old fashioned way, by placing flowers between tissue paper and then parchment paper and putting it in between the pages of a heavy book. These flowers should be dried within 2-3 weeks. The second method of drying flowers is the wonderful Microfleur. This method uses the microwave and the flowers are dried within a minute!
Once the flowers are dried they need to be treated so they will not be brittle and break. A gel medium in painted onto the backs. Once treated these flowers can be used on mixed media. They can even go thru our mail without damage!
I have spent many an afternoon drying flowers with my daughter. Unfortunately, we have a lot of snow here this time of year, so i have had to go to the florist to find flowers that will work. But i am hoping that soon, the snow will be gone and maybe the winter pansies will be the first flower that I can dry from the garden.
Warmly,
NancyJean
I dry most of my flowers by hanging them on my clothes drying rack I like the way they retain there shape and their is just something comforting about having flowers hanging in my home.
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