I'm so excited about the new garden challenge I created. You can sign up for it now and it starts on October 1. One of the challenges is to dry something from the garden and while looking up resources on how to do it, I was inspired to do it myself!
These two scanned in flowers that I dried will be offered to subscribers, but one of them will be the next newsletter freebie.
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Here is the layout I made with my dried flowers. It will also be Template 80 to come out later today or tomorrow.
I wanted to share with you how I dried my rose in the microwave.
I tore a strip of waxed paper and some paper towels and layered them. I wish I had put the waxed paper next to the flower because the paper towels made engravings on my flower. However, I thought the texture was cool too, so either way will work. Just be considerate of what texture is next to the flower/leaf.
Next, since I choose a rose which is a fat flower, I squished it down some with my fingers. The petals broke off a little and I gently realigned them. With flatter flowers, this would not be necessary.
I folder over the layers of paper towel and waxed paper and put it in the microwave. I put a microwavable dish over the flower.
I decided the one dish was not heavy enough to squish the flower down, so I added another microwavable dish on top.
Next, I microwaved it for 1 minute.
You can see the moisture came out of the flower as it soaked both the paper towel and the waxed paper. The flower looked dry and flat and I was excited. However, I tested by microwaving it yet again for one more minute, after I put a dry paper towel over the flower. I could not move it easy, so only replaced one of the towels.
It turned out wonderful! I was so excited. It took some careful and gently fingers to peel the flower from the paper towel. I can imagine smaller flowers might be even more difficult.
I put the flower on my scanner and scanned it at 600 px. I turned it over and scanned again to get the other side. Then it took me a few hours to extract both flowers as I wanted a high quality image.
I had a lot of fun with this easy project! If you don't have flowers or leaves in your yard, buy yourself a treat at the florist!
2 comments:
Bravo !!
I read with interest your enriching instructions !
I never thought about drying in a micro-wave oven, i still do it between two white pieces of paper placed underneath a pile of magazines or books...
C from Paris :D
Wow! What a great tutorial that is! i would not have thought a MW oven could dry anything since it seems to create moisture. Wooohooo! This process seems to have kept the color of the rose very well. i used to dry them in the silicon gel, and that did preserve the color better than pressing did, but your method is really superior to either way! Thanks. i didn't see a link in my newsletter to get the one image though.
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