Pressed Floral Luminaires & Vases — a craft farewell to Summer

Summer isn’t yet over, and Autumn hasn’t truly begun (at least not on the trees), but this weekend a grey and cold morning almost seemed to demand crafting in pajamas! Since we were tired (our third day home from the holidays, and the start of a new school year) we wanted a ‘lazy craft’ using only use materials we had in our home, and something easy enough for a 5 and 2 year old. So I started rummaging around the house, and came across a flower press containing our little collected treasures from a walk we took in early summer… aha a floral craft?!?! What a lovely little homage to this past sunny summer! Now, what would I need next?

A bit more searching and scouring, (this time in the kitchen) and I realised we had a pretty collection of glass jars and bottles!  Then, inspiration hit me immediately. I would recreate a Babyccino craft, based on Esther’s Autumnal leaf lanterns, which are stunningly beautiful (and we have enjoyed making in the past!).  Now fingers crossed my dried and pressed flowers would work, so off I went to create our craft area.

The good news is that the crafting experiment was a success! They are pretty, fragile looking, and almost seem like something you would buy out of a handmade boutique! So, if you have any dried flowers, or want to collect a few flowers from a field, a garden, etc, then press them for a day or two (between book pages or with a flower press) before summer truly ends and you will also love the end result!

The kids got instantly so excited about it as well, opening the pages of wax paper in the press like gifts under a tree, revealing the flowers from a walk we took months ago. Then they loved painting on the glue, pressing the flowers into where they wanted them, and then enthusiastically watching the items dry clear. And of course, the end result, which they were so proud of.

Enjoy this easy craft!

Materials :

• Decopauge, glue (which is best) or we used school PVA glue
• Large paintbrush
• Glass jars, bottles, etc with smooth sides
• Wax paper or newspaper (for keeping surfaces clean)
• Pressed flowers
• Scissors
• Tea-light (optional)

How to make the Pressed Floral Luminaries and Vase:

1. Choose which flowers you want to use where, we chose 5 flowers foreach child’s container
2. Paint one thick layer of glue (or Mod-Podge) on the surface of the glass jar, avoiding the base. Clean up drips as soon as possible. However, the end result isn’t really affected by a few smears or drips.
3. Carefully lay the flowers onto the glue, since they are much more fragile than this similar project with leaves. Also regarding the layout, we preferred to keep it simple and have the flowers ‘growing up’ from the base, but if you only have flower heads or petals that could create really pretty patterns too.
4. Trim the extra stems, etc, just make sure you have all the flowers touching the jar and glue!
5. Let it dry entirely ( a few hours) … then do a second coat and let that dry, and enjoy!

We love the end result. What a lovely way to capture a season, and make a special feature, centrepiece, or keepsake out of it. We are gifting ours to our Grandmother who we’ve missed all summer, but if we had a larger collection of pressed flowers, we would definitely have made a few luminaries and vases for ourselves. Maybe next year!

Thanks again to Esther for her inspiration! Enjoy!

Lara x