How to make a framed pressed flowers picture
This year I’ve been pressing larger flower specimens. It’s time to put them in a frame. The great thing about having had a dried flowers workshop for twenty years is that I can just wander in and find something suitable! I found some modern box frames and some antiqued metal floating frames (these are glass front and back so you can see right through). Here are some tips for how to frame pressed flowers.
How to frame pressed flowers – what you need
Items you’ll need for a traditional frame are:
- Frame
- Mount (if your frame doesn’t come with a mount I recommend getting one because it adds gravity to your composition and they’re only a couple of pounds)
- Acid-free paper such as archival paper, to stop your flowers deteriorating
- PVA glue which is acid-free and dries clear
- Small paintbrush or piece of sponge to apply the glue
- Plastic tweezers to position your flowers – I’ve found that they’re less likely to cause damage than metal ones
- Masking tape to attach the mount to your picture
The trick to arranging pressed flowers in a frame
Unless you’re making a pressed flower collage, the trick to framing pressed flowers is to leave plenty of space. Arrange them with some kind of logic, be it reflection, repetition or a story. It helps to remember that people in the West generally read left to right. This means that if you’re depicting some kind of flow or story, it needs to run left to right. For example in my geranium picture above, time flows left to right. The flower on the left has an unopened bud whereas the flower on the right is developing seed in its elongated pods.
If you’re leaning into the herbarium feel of specimens collected for scientific study, then a few words at the bottom might also be apt. Here are some suggestions about what you might like to include:
- The common name of the flower
- Botanical name
- Where collected
- Date collected
- Name of collector
- Comments about the location e.g. cultivated or wild, garden or somewhere else.
How to frame pressed flowers – Practical tips
Here are some do’s and don’ts for handling your pressed flowers:
- Try not to handle the flowers too much – use tweezers if possible, to avoid transferring your natural oils which may discolour the blooms. If you don’t have tweezers, wash your hands!
- Don’t go too mad with the glue – if you use too much it will show up, as although it dries clear it will be shiny. Too much glue may also cause the flowers to float out of place.
- Wayward stems can be held in place using paper tape. Purists can buy archival tape, but alternatives include: cutting a small piece of paper which can be glued in place with PVA; narrow masking tape, or decorative washi tape. For example you can see I held the roses in place in the floating frame above using this method.
Tips for floating frames
I think floating frames are easier to use than traditional frames because there’s less to do! However, you do have to be more careful with the glue as the flowers can be seen from both sides. As you can see in my pressed rose picture, I didn’t use glue at all. The frame itself holds the flowers in place to some extent, and I simply helped it along by adding a couple of pieces of masking tape per pane. The masking tape I found was only 3mm across and comes in a selection of colours from Hobbycraft. I chose black to match the frame.
I hope this post has helped a little with the question of how to frame pressed flowers! Once you’ve framed them, if you choose to display them in a sunny spot or window, do be aware that they’ll naturally fade a little over time.
If you’d like to buy some pressed flowers to frame at home then do visit my UK shop where you can also see some more finished artwork.
Read about how to make pressed flower cards