May
19
Dried Flowers: Preservation of Rose
May 19, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Silk flowers have occupied a big area of the flower market round the globe. People go for those because of their easy availability and also because, those can be maintained properly and easily. Cleansing these flowers is not a very difficult task. Whatever may be the plus points, but silk flowers have their own kind of drawbacks. Whatever effort may be put in, to create those flowers or cleanse and maintain those, but on a closer view, the on looker can easily find out that it does not look exactly like an original flower. Dry flowers at least, closely resemble their fresh counterparts. In case, you want rose in your room decoration, go for dried rose. Flower preservation involves methodical treatment of flowers and a bit of patience, because, often this procedure can take time.
Now-a-days even flower preserving is a hobby that many people pursue. Here are a few methods that you can use for preserving roses. Here are a few methods for drying rose effectively and preserve those.
Pressing: Pressing is one of the most effective methods for drying flowers. Even a kid can try out this method and dry flowers. Roses dried in this method are used for creating greetings cards or other decorations. Roses dried in this method will look a bit pressed. That is why it cannot regain its original shape. For preservation you will just have to place the rose in between two pages of a fat and heavy book.
Air-Drying Process: This method is probably the easiest method of drying flowers, while the flowers also retain their original shape. That is why this is a wise idea to go for this method if you are drying roses. For drying flower in this method you need to find out a warm, dark and dry place. Direct sun light can spoil the flowers. In this method, the roses needed to be collected in a bunch and hanged from a rope or wire tightly tied between two poles.
Desiccants: For drying roses in the desiccant method you will need to burry the flowers in desiccant materials. The desiccant material is available in granular form. While drying in this method make sure that each and every corner of the flowers are properly embedded in desiccant material. Otherwise, the drying procedure may remain incomplete. But, No flower should lose its shape under desiccant, as it may deform the original shape of the flowers. It is preferable to use silica gel as desiccant.
Borax Methods: In this case also, flowers are buried, but under the mixture of white cornmeal and borax in a 1:2 ratio. Unlike flowers dried in hang and dry method, flowers dried in this method remain supple and soft. The procedure can also be done with the help of sand and borax, mixed in 1:2 ratio. If dried in this method, roses retain their shape and look good in any kinds of floral arrangements.
Next time you plan for drying and preserving roses, you can go for any of the methods mentioned over here.
May
19
People are aware of the medicinal effects of lavender and they know pretty well what kinds of benefits it can yield out when applied as skincare products. Very few are aware of its therapeutic effect creating magic while consumed directly as food or as accompaniment. But there are indeed a few things you must remember while cooking with dried lavender.
There is different variety of lavenders. It is necessary to find out the best variety. Individual variety has its own charm in the aroma. English lavender is the sweetest smelling variety, while, the other have a slight citrus smell infused into those. It is the smell of the lavender oils that are going to create the aroma in food. So, you have to select the variety according to your choice. Lavandins, a variety of lavender has a bold smell. Their oils have a kind of camphorous and astringent effect. In case, you do not find the English lavender, go for the Lavandins provenence lavender.
A very important point about using lavender in cooking is the amount of it to be put while cooking. It is a very strong herb and an overdose of it can spoil the food. Dried lavender has a stronger smell than the fresh one. If you use one teaspoonful fresh flower in food, just settle for 1/3 teaspoonful dried flowers.
In order to keep the fragrance of dried lavender intact, it is necessary to lock its fragrance inside it and for that you need to keep those inside airtight container or packaging. You can freeze dried lavender buds in a freezer, but only after keeping those in ma zipped bag. It is better to use these dried lavenders within a year after breaking the seal of package.
Initially people used lavender only in desserts. Later on, gradually a practice of using it in other varieties of food grew. So, people started adding flavor to meat, and other dishes with lavender.
You can create lavender sugar at home. Then you will be ably to add the flavor of lavender to your food whenever you wish. Clean a coffee machine that no dust of coffee remains. Put two lavender flowers inside the machine along with 2 to 3 tablespoonful sugar. This way the essential oils of lavender mix with sugar. Remember to store this sugar in an air tight, dry container. You can flavor your wine with lavender and spice your evening up.
May
19
Lavender is a wonder product for skin. Dried lavender is used in millions of different skin care products manufactured in different countries around the world. It has its nutritious value. That is why it is put in different types of food and other edible products. In this article you will come to know about myriad of such products.
Lavender Wedding Favor: Lavender wedding favor is a wonderful product for presenting the invited guests to the wedding ceremony. These are simple sachets made of lavender buds. You can put rose buds into those sachets. That will only add to the fragrance. The invited guests will take home the sachets and they can use those as fragrant agents inside their wardrobes even long after the marriage is over.
Lavender Candles: Beeswax candles fragrant with dried lavender are gifts apt for any occasion. The aroma of lavender has a soothing effect on peoples’ senses. It rejuvenates and numbs troubled mind. So once a lavender candle is burning around, somebody, mentally disturbed will feel comfortable. The aroma has a healing effect.
Lavender Spa Products: There are different types of spa and aromatherapy products available in the market around the world. Lavender is always famous for being a great stress-busting product. You can gift your near and dear ones with a wonderful lavender stress ball. These are for exercising your hands. Dried lavender is distilled in water for making organic lavender water. This can be a nice gift for your near and dear ones who can mist him or herself with the lavender water. This simply keeps the sense of the person awake for long.
Lavender Sprayed Card: this is a wonderful gift for your friends on any occasion. This card will let your heart speak your words with the fragrance of lavender.
Lavender Skin Care Product: There are myriad of skin care products made of dried lavender buds and flowers. Lavender tincture is a wonder potion for soothing sunburns, itching, irritating skin, insect bites, etc.
Lavender Food and Dressing: Dried lavender is often used for making salad dressings. You can add dried lavender or lavender oil to garlic paste, lemon juice, ginger, honey, tamari, canola oil, etc to make the dressing. Moreover, now a days you can get Dark and Milk chocolates in lavender flavor also. Often dried lavender is added to those chocolates.
May
19
Dried Flowers: Lavender Utility Products
May 19, 2008 | 2 Comments
Lavender is famous for its fragrance and wonderful, bright color. Lavender can be dried and preserved for future use. Lavender is not only used for creating floral arrangements, but can be used as the material for other uses, such as, making lavender sachet, lavender wand, lavender oil, etc. The best method of drying lavender is by drying in hang and dry method. The method takes around a week for drying flowers. After a week, you should keep it in a shady area (not under direct sunlight) for around a year. This will dry the bunches of lavender thoroughly. No moisture will remain trapped inside the bunch, not even between the petals.
After drying for one long year, the color of lavender fades a great deal and looks shabby, but the fragrance almost remains the same. These dried lavenders are used for making several lavender utility products.
Lavender Sachet: In order to make lavender sachet you need to gently roll a few lavender sticks in between your two palms. This way, the lavender buds are shaken off from the stems. Now pour the lavender buds in a tiny bag and tie the top of that sachet with a nice looking satin or golden ribbon. This sachet will become a nice moth repellent for your drawers, cupboards and an element to make the surrounding area fragrant.
Lavender Wand:
Materials you need to make a lavender wand:
Fresh lavender stems, stems must be at least 12 inches long, satin ribbon. Making this lavender utility product is practicing a complete art form.
Shed all the leaves from the stems. More flexible the stems of lavender will remain, more useful it will be for making lavender wands. If you have planned to make Bulk Dried Lavender are from lavender stems, then harvest the stems early in the morning. At that time stems remain supple. Line the heads of the flowers in the same line and tie the stems into a bundle.
Turn the flower head downwards. After that fold each of the stems and do this with all the remaining stems. Take the satin ribbon and tie one end of it at the neck of the wand. From there start winding the remaining part of the ribbon round the stems. These ways tie all the stems into a stiff stick. Make sure that the part with the lavender buds is completely covered by the stems. Tie the end of the ribbon into a boe at the end of the stick. Once the “magic” wand is ready, put it for drying. Your lavender wand is ready to ward off insects and make your wardrobe fragrant.
May
19
Dried flower decorative elements are nowadays found quite often, both at homes and offices. You can make at your home and give your creative bent a chance. If you enjoy making different types of wall hangings at home and decorate your own house as you wish, just try making a dry flower wall hanging.
You can have fun making such wall hangings. Moreover, if children are at home, you can
Make them try their hands in a bit of creativity. Before making a nice wall hanging, you need to keep a few things handy.
v Take a bowl made of plastic or paper that can easily be cut with the help of a pair of scissors.
v Florist’s Foam
v 2 pieces of stiff and very thick cardboards (the boards must be of the size you you’re your wall hanging to be).
v Adhesive for sticking foam, plastic or paper bowl and cardboard
v Dried flowers
v Colors for the wall hanging
v Fishing line or string for hanging the piece of art
After collecting all the necessary things for making the wall hanging, cut the paper bowl into two halves. Before going for the entire work, it is preferable to think of a structure of the wall hanging you want to make. Decide the shape of the dried flower wall hanging. It is better to cut the card board in a size that is larger than the half bowl. Otherwise the frame cannot be placed properly.
Cut the desired shape of your wall hanging from both the card boards. One will create the frame for the wall hanging and the other will be used to give the hanging a stiff and strong base. Cut both sheets of cardboard into the shape of your chosen frame
Make two holes to at the backside of the cardboard placed at the back of the wall hanging. This way the whole s cannot be seen from the front. Run the string through the two holes at the back of the wall hanging.
If your wall hanging is made of paper bowl, then it will be a good idea to paint that with different colors, to make it look brighter. In case, you are making the wall hanging with plastic bowl, then stick papers on the plastic bowl and make drawings on it. After that, just add the color of your imagination to it.
Put the florists foam inside the flower basket and then glue it to the bowl. Place the flowers inside the bowl and make sure that the heads of flowers peep out of the basket. Fix the base of flowers properly into the foam. As you are done and all the adhesives get dried, hang the flower wall hanging on the wall at your house.
May
19
Dried Pressed Flowers: Dyeing Dry Flowers
May 19, 2008 | 1 Comment
You can buy a beautiful floral arrangement for decorating a corner of your room. You can also try making one at your home. In that case you will definitely put in a lot of effort to make that flower arrangement and will definitely pray that it remains for ever. It is possible, only if you preserve the arrangement. Even in that case, after drying the flowers of your flower arrangement can look a bit blurred. If you dye those flowers it can regain its lost glory.
During summer you can try out this art at home. You can gather different types of grasses, stems, pine cones, etc and add those to your beautiful flower arrangement. In fact, this is a nice way to spend your pass time during summer. But, floral arrangements or wreaths made of all dried elements may end up looking like merely a bunch of dried flowers. It can be offered a touch of life after sprucing it up with a little bit of paints and dyes.
Dried flowers and other plant materials are usually painted with dyes made of different organic elements. Individual colors absorb light of different frequencies. After reflecting certain amount of light, these dyes make the flowers look brighter.
There are different kinds of paints for dying plant elements. The most widely used dyes for painting flowers is food color. But remember that food additives may harm the condition of flowers being dyed. These dyes are available in a range of different colors. Food dyes are a bit expensive and are available in only a few colors, but still, those are almost harmless for drying flowers. Usually these types of dyes are sold in the market after doing rigorous toxicity test to save the flowers from food additives. Still it is better to take one petal from somewhere at the back of the floral arrangements and test the dye on it.
May
19
Dried Pressed Flowers: History of Drying Flowers
May 19, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Whenever you decide to decorate your house, fresh flower is the material that you probably think of. Did you know that the floral arrangements for decorating your house can have even a longer shelf life? Just settle for dried flowers and see what a magic it can create in the usual stereotype decorations inside your house. People around the world have been using dried flowers for creating different types of floral arrangements for quite sometime. The act of drying flowers by pressing method became popular during the Victorian times.
Japanese initiated the art of making Oshibana art with the help of colored papers and pressed flowers. In this art a single leaf is used to make a whole tree and flower petals are pasted to make mountains. Petals, leafs and other parts of a tree or plant is pasted on a piece of board and on the board, different kinds of pictures take shape.
In the prehistoric era, people in the
During the period of the sixteenth century the Elizabethan Age was gradually waning away from
In the Egyptian Civilization, preserving flowers used to be considered as a serious art and they preserved elaborate floral arrangements and garlands in these methods. During the medieval period monks dried flowers for making medicines. With time drying flower became necessary for preserving the nice floral centerpieces in houses and offices.
May
19
Dried Flower Gifts and Wholesale: Planting Violet for Natural Inscence
May 19, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Violet among the flowers that are used for making sweet smells perfumes. This variety is definitely for those who love caressing themselves with sweet smelling perfumes. But, this smell is a strict no for people who love a little tangy aroma or woody smell on their body. During the 1st century AD fragrances started being made of violets, especially in
There exotic sweet smell has always kept on mesmerizing people round the globe. Later on violets started being cultivated in different other countries in the world mainly for the purpose of extracting its perfume. Previously, scent of orris root was blended with violet for making perfumes. Later on, during the later part of the 19th century more and more people started cultivating violet mainly for commercial purposes.
Cultivating Violet for Making Perfumes:
If you are planning to make violet perfume at home or even want its smell merely to spread its sweet aroma around you. In order to do that you won’t need to do much except sowing the seeds of violet in seed trays, during the season of autumn. Then just cover the seeds with a layer of soil and water those. Then put a glass or plastic sheet cover on it. You can keep the seed tray at any corner of your garden or just put them in cold frame. Generally the seedlings are transferred to individual pots during spring. Then the pots placed outside, but of course at a shady place. The best condition for the growth and flourishing of violets consists of rich and heavy soil, moderately shaded area.
After these plants flourish once, just replant them at your garden. Violet looks nice if you plant those in a container and put that at the corner of your drawing room. The room will get a natural room freshener as the flowers will bloom. Make sure you keep the container near the windows or at a place where it can get a little bit of sun and air.
May
8
Silk flower decorative elements are nice and economically viable for not only decorating your house, but to beautify your office and business centre. But, it is a complete wrong illusion that you can keep these things without taking much care of those. If you do not clean those regularly, they can lose color, shape and texture. A simple fresh flower centerpiece adds a lot of colors and beautiful smell to an otherwise drab look of the room. But, at the same time it is very difficult to keep fresh flowers in good condition for long. Dried flowers on the other hand, remains in good condition for a longer period. It is not much difficult to take care for silk flowers, as you can chose from a wide range of cleansing agents for silk flowers available in the market.
One of the major benefits of silk flowers is that people who are allergic to pollens can also keep silk flowers decorative piece at home. For proper care for silk flowers you need to find out the best cleansing elements. After that you have to clean those carefully. Unlike fresh flowers, in case of silk flowers there is no need to change water everyday. But, if you do not clean it from time to time, it may gather dust. Dust on silk flowers worsens the condition of asthma patients or people who are allergic to dust. Here is a detailed guidance for perfect care for silk flowers.
Take out one leaf or petal from the floral arrangement at your house. Hold that under running water. Shake the droplets off and put for drying. If it does not show any sign of visible damages or does not seem to get discolored, wash the entire decorative piece with water. Remember that you should wash it off with cold water only. Warm or hot water can damage its silk.
If the material of your silk flowers cannot be cleaned with water, just put those in a plastic bag and throw a little bit of salt in it. Then shake the bag. You can also use baking soda as an alternative to salt. Baking soda or salt dissolves dust and dirt. An ozone-safe aerosol spray cleaner for silk flowers will be the safest cleaner for those. If they can withstand heat, you can use hair dryer kept at minimum temperature or vacuum cleaner for this purpose.
May
8
The day of wedding is a special one and people want to keep all the memoirs of that particular ceremony intact. The first and foremost among the memoirs of marriage is the wedding bouquet of the bride. She would definitely like to preserve it in a way that it remains for a lifetime, just as it was on the very day of wedding. You can chose flower of any color, including white. But if you follow each and every detailed methods of flower preservation, the wedding bouquet will look beautiful for a lifetime. While choosing the method of flower preservation, be sure that the flower you have chosen can respond properly to that method. You can follow these simple methods for preserving your wedding bouquet. There are several flower preservation methods, but you have to choose the one that suite the condition you can provide to the flowers.
Here is a list of things you may need for preserving your wedding bouquet:
· Small Coolers
· Sand
· Ice
· Wedding Invitations
· Wedding Flower Bouquets
· Plastic
· Internet Access
1) You can try these methods out, at home or may take help of professionals for better result. You may select any of the drying methods, but the procedure of preserving must be done after a maximum of four days from the wedding day.
2) Some of the methods of the flower preservation may take more than a few weeks for drying the flowers.
3) If you want your bouquet to be preserved with its most realistic look go for the freeze drying method of flower preserving. In this method, the entire bouquet is not dried at once. Rather each individual part of the bouquet is separated from it and then dried for preserving. Once each part of the bouquet is dried those are arranged together as a unified whole and if you can trust the method, it will make your wedding bouquet remain looking fresh for decades.
4) If you choose to follow the pressed drying method for preserving the bouquet, the flowers in the preserved bouquet will look pressed, but if you frame it properly it will replicate the exact bouquet in the form of a hanged picture. The bouquet can look pressed, but the silhouette will remain almost the same. The entire method takes around 8 to 10 weeks of time.
5) Make bouquet preservation arrangements in advance of the wedding date. The preservationist will give you instructions on how to care for and transport your bouquet.
6) Expect florists are ready to preserve flowers for you at the payment of $100. In this case the cost of flower preservation from experts depends on the size of that bouquet. Moreover, additional services of decorative frames, individual glass enclosures, etc.
7) Drying agents like, silica gel, borax, sand is used for preserving flowers. Using these elements you can preserve your own bouquet at home. In this process you have to cover each of the flowers totally with any of these drying agents. The process involves covering each flower completely with the drying agent you want to use.