DIY Pressed Flower Art
How to press flowers and leaves from your own backyard to frame as inexpensive, vintage-inspired wall decor.
We’re moving right along on the guest bedroom makeover saga, and it turns out, after all this time, the perfect wall decor was growing right in our backyard.
If you’ve been around these parts awhile, then you already know I have a “thing” for botanical prints… even though I couldn’t keep a real plant alive if my own life depended on it.
So hey! Let’s just kill ’em and stick ’em in frames. That’ll do it.
Some people make lemonade out of lemons. We’re making art out of dead plants. Logic.
DIY Pressed Flower Art
(Some affiliate links are provided below. Full disclosure here.)
Supplies Used:
- A variety of leaves and flowers (pick them on a sunny day after the morning dew has dissipated)
- Flower press (I bought this fancy little contraption, but if you already have parchment paper and a lot of large, heavy books, save your money because that will do the trick just fine.)
- Textured paper
- Picture frames
The Steps
1. Robert, Olivia, Regan, and I all took a little walk around the backyard together to pick a few different leaves and flowers for the job, which makes it even more special.
Look at this sweet face. She’s so proud!
2. Make sure your leaves/flowers aren’t wet at all before pressing. Place each individual flower/leaf on a piece of blotting paper with about an inch between each and place another piece of blotting paper on top.
3. “Sandwich” the blotting paper with the flowers/leaves between cardboard and continue stacking them.
4. Place the large, heavy books on top or between the two boards in the flower press.
5. Let the flowers/leaves sit in the press for 2-3 days to fully dry out.
6. Carefully remove the pressed flowers/leaves and place into a frame with a piece of textured paper behind it and press with the frame’s backing.
Easy peasy… flower squeezey. 😉
I picked up the frames from Walmart for $28 total for all 6 and the paper pieces were just textured scrapbook pages I grabbed at Michael’s for about 80 cents each.
So now the guest room is going places with some art! What’s even better is all of the plants have a bit of a significance to where we live – magnolia, crape myrtle, palmetto, and gardenia.
The frames are on the small side since I plan on putting a large leaner mirror right beside them, and a massive piece of art will hang on the opposite wall.
The other two are ginkgo and what I think is snapdragon? See? I know absolutely zilch about plants… which is probably why they suffer a sad, pathetic death with me as their mama.
Since we’re coming up to fall really soon, this is one of those projects that would be so pretty with different colored fall leaves too, so maybe I’ll have to whip up another set when the leaves change during a #crafternoon.
By the way, you can find more DIY art ideas here, if you have a whole lot of blank walls that need love.
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