Shoebox: Shrinking Flowers

Carol Duvall Show : Episode CDS-1860 -- More Projects » By Carol Duvall

Figure A

Figure B

Cherryl and I were absolutely fascinated and mystified with the items sent to the Shoebox by Sandra Najjar of Mountain Brook, Ala. Sandra sent in a half-dozen gorgeous note cards that had beautiful floral bouquets (Figure A) and wreaths (Figure B) on the front of them. We've seen cards with pressed flowers on them; in fact, we’ve made some. But these flowers didn't look pressed. They were obviously dried, but they had dimension to them both in the fact that they were layered, and the edges were slightly curled on some of them. Also they were tinier than any flowers we had ever seen.

We simply had to know more, so we called Sandra and heard a most interesting story about how she dries and shrinks her flowers. Those of you who saw the show heard what she had to tell us, so you know that there are no rules and no for-sure answers.

Figure C

Figure D

Figure E

Sandra uses flowers from her garden as well as wildflowers and some that came from a plant that she bought. The petals of most of the flowers that she uses are fairly small to begin with. She uses violas (Figure C) rather than pansies in many cases. She removes the individual petals from hydrangeas (Figure D). She uses verbena (Figure E) and Queen Anne's lace (which doesn't shrink) as well as flowers she doesn’t know the name of (Figure F)! She picks snake grass (Figure G) early in the season.

Figure F

Figure G

Figure H

And then she dries them--but she doesn't do this in the standard way in a phone book. She uses a New York paper and places the petals on a base of several sheets of paper (Figure H) and covers them with three or four pages (a section) but she does NOT put anything over the paper to weigh it down. Then she lets them dry for several days. When she returns many of them have shrunk. Often if she lets them dry longer they will shrink more. Some of the edges curl, which gives them the dimension.

Figure I

All fine and dandy but this doesn't always work. It doesn’t work with her local paper. Only the New York Times. We tried USA Today, the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal as well as the New York Times. Some worked, some didn't. Why? Who knows. Perhaps the ink in the paper affects the flowers in different ways. Perhaps it is the amount of moisture in the paper. And perhaps the moisture in the air makes a difference as well because some that didn't work for me in Michigan worked in Los Angeles. Sandra sent us several quarts of her miniature flowers so I know that it works often enough to make it fun. And you saw the cards she made by arranging the flowers one at a time, adhering them to the card with a spot of glue applied with a toothpick (Figure I) and then filling in any holes to build up dimension. The cards were pretty on television, but in real life they were fantastic!

Also in this Episode

Carol Duvall Show : Episode CDS-1860
•	Organic Fiber Floor Mat
•	Faux Crocodile Book Cover
•	Shoebox: Shrinking Flowers

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