Preparing to Press flowers with Hannah

There is really no mystery to pressing flowers. The reality is that pressing flowers is a very honest and straight forward art that anyone can do. Why would I start by telling you this? Because what really makes the difference in your finished product is in the details of how the flowers are prepped, handled and how they are arranged.  Here's ours! 

Here is the bouquet with the ribbon and tapes removed.

Here is the completely deconstructed bridal bouquet.

Step 4: Loading the presses!
Pressing flowers is a lot like BINGO, everyone seems to have their special way of doing it. Presses pretty much have the same mechanics. Two boards, some tissue, cardboard and clamps or tightening agents. These are different from press to press but they all seem to have the same larger idea. 

​The Bouquet we will be sharing with you is one which was made at Hannah's. The photo to the left was taken prior to putting on the ribbon wrap at the stem. This is good because you seldom get to see the mechanics of bridal pieces. All florists design differently. I use soft corsage tape to hold my stems so that they will not get cut or crushed. Keeping the stems in tact is also key to keeping bouquets fresh!

Step one: Assessing the bouquet  
Not all blooms are going to be good for pressing, some blooms may be dead and some just may not be visually appealing.  We have to take the bouquet apart to inspect the blooms. 

Look how pretty this wrap was! It is double faced satin with a sheer love knot overlay.

The stems are in incredible shape for a bouquet. They were still very hydrated and fresh looking and they were still very stiff. 

Step Two: Choosing the blooms.
This is where an artful eye, a few tricks of the trade and a designers touch comes in handy. This is a very critical part to creating a stunning finished product.  

Step Three: Choosing the blooms
They are all pretty, but you can only choose a few depending on the size of the ordered finished piece. We also must consider what blooms will press best. Because this was a Hannah's bride, we knew that Sweet pea has very important sentimental meaning to her so we made sure to  press a good portion of it. Sweet pea is not going to be the most stunning specimen in the frame, but it may be the most meaningful. 

This is a prepped Eskimo Rose

The presses are loaded and this bouquet start out at about 7 inches in height. Once the press is tightened down it sits at just around two inches! That is a lot of pressure! And there it will sit, safe and sound until it is pressed dry.
Boom!

If you would like us to press a bouquet or a blossom for you please feel free to drop in, give us a call, send us a note or shoot us a consultation request.
If you are not from our area you are welcome to ship your flowers to Hannah's. Simply give us a call and we will walk you through the steps! 
xoxo
Hannah

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