Preserving Flowers by David and Suzie
Hi, I'm Suzie and I'm David.
We're a florists based in
Manchester in the UK
and today we're going to show you
how to air dry flowers.
So why to preserve flowers?
Well did you receive flowers recently for a gift
and you want to turn a gorgeous memory
into tangible reminder. Or do you love creating
new designs with different shapes, forms, colors.
Keeping the shelf-life from weeks to months,
if not years for some. Definitely.
So there's lots of different ways of
preserving flowers nowadays.
And with Suzie today
We're going to show you one of the
most traditional way of doing it,
which is air drying flowers.
Air drying is the most accessible way
to dry your flowers.
You can do it at home, letting nature
do all the hard work
while you sit back and relax.
Oh my kind of way of doing it.
There's no chemicals needed,
so you very much keeping the flowers
still biodegradable.
PREPARATION Important factors to do
PREPARATION before you start for a seamless journey,
PREPARATION you want to make sure that
your followers are still fresh.
Slightly matured flowers will drop
their petals and become moldy.
Few tools are required, not a lot but a few
of them, which is like
a good pair of scissors or floristry scissors
In our case,
some natural twine or you could use
a ribbon or some wire.
And we need some hooks,
or you could use pegs instead,
or even coat hangers. There we go.
Flower types that are really good to dry
are roses. Yeah we've got some lovely,
roses with us today.
And eucalyptus mixed varieties.
I've got some lovely parvi
just here to smell,
that always smells gorgeous.
Sunflowers, which look
pretty cool even without
the petal just by themselves.
And status. Status here, still a winner
We've got craspedia, love craspedia.
Such a good texture. Amaranthus
which is beautiful color for the autumn. Very autumnal.
It's gorgeous, isn't it?
Time for demonstration.
Well isn't it. The best part.
Okay, So we're gonna do with our roses, okay,
so what we're going to do is take
all the leaves off of the stem of the flower.
And if you've got any damaged petals,
you don't want that one when you dry out, so okay,
so we're going to leave it like that. Gorgeous roses
They are gorgeous. Have a smell. Really nice.
So when you taking off the leaves
it does help the roses dry a lot quicker.
So that's an little trick of
why we are taking off the leaves..
Okay, I'm gonna do the third one.
Okay, it's really easy with your hands
like this, I'm really lucky
because this one's got no thorns at all
so perfect. Watch out for the thorns.
Definitely. Okay so we're going to remove here.
And when they come, they might be in
a bouquet like you've received it from a gift.
So definitely
dismantle all of the bouquet
You really need to get air
in between all of the stems.
I'm just going to take
some twine and what I'm going to do,
I'm just going to put them okay
gapped between each other. Like that
will give it air when it is drying. I think it's the main thing becuase you
don't want them tied together or it will get moldy.
Okay. So like that and what I'm going to do
is having tied it really
really tight together. You know why Suzie?
Why?
Because when the water is
drying and the water will come out,
out down the stem,
the stem will get thinner.
So if you haven't tied this
tight enough, the stem will just fall down.
So it's a tirick of the trade.
And something to bare in
mind is the colours.
So when you've got bright
bold colors like this,
you really ideally want to keep that
so putting them in a dark room,
which is still ventilated and
dry will really restore a lot of the color.
So attics are good, empty closets
if you've got, if you've got
an airing cupboard, which
no one really has anymore.
Well something like that. Something like that
Wardrobe, yeah.
If you don't have too many clothes. So that's a great place
Fantastic.
So I'm going to do,
I'm going to cut the stem here, I don't really need them
We'll cut that.
Okay. What I'm going
to do I'm going to take one of the hooks
we took earlier and put that like that
I want I'm going to do I'm just gonna
start putting it there we go. Upside down.
And it can breathe and dry.
So. And roses take quite a bit of time,
isn't it, about two to three weeks
to fully dry.
It's about three weeks.
Yeah, absolutely.
And they look really cool as well.
So you're kinda getting a little mini installation
in your home.
And if you
don't have a dark space
and you don't mind
the colors fading slightly.
Conservatories are really good.
And greenhouses, if you're lucky, are great.
So there they are going to dry a lot quicker
because they've got the sunlight
and the windows
but they just will fade in color.
So that's just something to bear in mind.
Okay.
And if you want to do with
flowers a bit more delicate,
what would you do? So basically,
there are some flowers such as
dalia and chrysanthemums
I know they are so lovely. And as
you can see that they've got a lot of
petals so when they're hung
upside down, the water
will travel through the stem
and actually make it
go quite moldy and lose some petals,
which is a real shame because
they are really beautiful.
Stunning. So a little trick
is get yourself some chicken wire.
And we've created this dome shape like so.
So it's really important to have a dome.
So that the air can get into the frame.
You then going to cut your flowers short
and we've got some here, like so.
So we're going to place them onto
the grid and the chicken wire holds it.
So I'm going to cut this one,
and I'm going to place it onto the grid.
It does look cool just like that. It does, it's effective.
And obviously once these are dry,
they're going to be really,
they're going to keep the shape.
You can use it to make a head dress
or just something that's really nice to use.
Fantastic.
Okay, so we're going to finish up with this one.
There we go. So this is
two really great methods
that you can do at home.
I hope we've really inspired you to carry on
drying your flowers.
I hope you enjoyed this
and thank you for joining us.
It's a bye from me. And a bye from me. Bye!