My sister recently got married and of course I had to do something fun with her flowers. A while back, I came across what I think is the best product for preserving flowers – silica gel. I love this product because it keeps the flowers shape and color extremely well. Truthfully, it is more expensive than other ways of preserving flowers, but in my opinion, you get the absolute best results by far. It’s also extremely easy to do and I will be showing you exactly how to preserve flowers using silica gel.
Other ways of preserving flowers include pressing or hanging them upside down to dry. With both of these methods, I find that flowers, such as roses, tend to crumble and completely lose their beautiful color.
With my preserved flowers, I plan to make resin coasters as well as a shadow box, but there are so many possibilities!
Supplies:
I only recommend products I would use myself and all opinions expressed here are my own. This post may contain affiliate links that at no additional cost to you, I may earn a small commission.
- Flowers
- Silica Gel
- Plastic Bins
- Scissors
Step 1: Organize Your Flowers
Start by organizing your flowers if you want to. I am preserving my sisters wedding bouquet and decided to pull out each individual stem.
That way, I could see what I was working with and which flowers I knew I wanted to preserve since I purposely didn’t purchase enough silica gel to preserve the entire bouquet.
Step 2: Using the Silica Gel
Open up your package of silica gel. It’s going to be a white sand-like material so be careful because it can get everywhere fast!
As a small disclaimer, it does come with instructions. I have followed these instructions exactly once before and got great results. However, I wasn’t able get that many flowers out of it by doing it that way. With the method I’m showing you here, I believe I got equally as good of a result.
Pour a layer approximately 1/2″ high from the bottom of your plastic bin.
Next, lay your flowers on the the layer of silica gel. You will have to cut off or trim the stems with a pair of scissors.
I would suggest using any larger flowers, like roses, for this layer just to make sure you will have enough room to cover the flowers with more silica gel.
Once you can’t fit any more flowers, cover them with a layer of silica gel.
After it’s covered, add more flowers on top.
I find that this layer works best with greenery and any florals that are more flat.
Once full, top it off with a layer of silica gel.
Repeat this process with however many flowers you are looking to preserve.
Once all the flowers are covered, take a look at the chart that is located in the silica gel package. It lists many different kinds of flowers and how long they should stay in the silica gel. I decided to leave all my flowers in for 3 days.
After the 3 days were up, I took all my flowers out.
Here is what all my flowers looked like after coming out of the silica gel!
I am so pleased with the results and love how the silica gel held the original color of the flowers.
I hope you liked this how to on preserving flowers and I hope you get great results! Please feel free to leave a comment below.
