12 Beautiful Things to Make With Pressed Flowers
I have a slight problem with pressing flowers before I have any idea what I’m going to do with them.
I’ll see something blooming that I like, or somebody will hand me a flower, or I’ll have a bouquet that has about two good days left in it and think, I should press some of these before I regret throwing them away.
So into the press they go.
Then a few weeks later I open it and suddenly I have stacks of flowers with absolutely no plan for them.
Honestly, I kind of like it that way.
Some of my favorite things I’ve made have started with the flowers instead of the project. You pull everything out, spread it across a table, and one weird little stem that you almost didn’t bother pressing suddenly looks perfect next to something else.
And if you’ve pressed flowers for any length of time, you also know they don’t all come out looking like perfect little specimens. Some are gorgeous. Some lose color. Some get crooked. Some petals separate. Occasionally you get one that makes you wonder what the hell happened in there.
Don’t toss all of those.
A flower that looks underwhelming sitting by itself can be exactly what an arrangement needs.
So if you have a stack of pressed flowers and no clue what to do with them, here are some projects actually worth making.
1. Make Framed Pressed Flower Art
This is the obvious one, but it’s also probably the project I’d recommend starting with. You can do so much with a frame.
You can use a single flower with a lot of empty space around it. You can make something that feels like a loose wildflower garden. You can arrange flowers by color. You can recreate a bouquet. You can make something more structured that looks like an old botanical specimen page.
The mistake I tend to make when I’m arranging flowers is wanting to keep adding things. There’s always one more tiny flower that would fit over here. And maybe a fern over there. And this little stem could fill that empty spot. Then eventually you stand back and realize you should have stopped about six flowers ago.
Pressed flower art usually looks better with some breathing room.
One trick I really like is arranging the entire piece before attaching anything. Move things around. Walk away from it. Come back. Take a picture with your phone and look at the picture instead of the actual arrangement. For whatever reason, seeing it on a screen makes crowded areas ridiculously obvious.
And don’t underestimate one beautiful stem in a frame. It can look incredibly good without needing fifteen other flowers around it.
2. Turn Wedding Flowers Into Art You’ll Actually Display
Wedding flowers are probably one of the best reasons to own a flower press, because spending a small fortune on flowers and then watching them die on a hotel counter three days later is kind of brutal.
You also do not need to press the entire bouquet intact.
I actually wouldn’t try.
Wedding bouquets tend to have some of the more difficult flowers to press: roses, peonies, ranunculus, dahlias, hydrangeas. A lot of thick, layered flowers holding a lot of moisture.
Take them apart.
Press petals. Press individual hydrangea florets. Press the greenery. Press the baby’s breath. Press the parts that are going to give you something beautiful to work with later.
Once everything is dry, you can recreate the feeling of the bouquet without making an exact botanical photocopy of it. I think those pieces are prettier anyway.
Add the wedding date if you want. A little piece of bouquet ribbon. Maybe part of the invitation. Or don’t add anything and let the flowers be the memory.
3. Make Pressed Flower Bookmarks
This is one of those projects that sounds almost too simple until you make one and realize they’re really freaking cute.
They’re also perfect for the flowers that are too small to carry a larger piece.
Violas, forget-me-nots, little fern fronds, tiny wildflowers, Queen Anne’s lace — all those little things you keep finding at the bottom of your flower storage suddenly have a purpose.
I prefer bookmarks that aren’t completely stuffed with flowers.
One little stem and a couple tiny blooms usually looks much more intentional than trying to cover the entire thing.
And if you give books as gifts, adding a handmade pressed flower bookmark is such an easy way to make the gift feel more personal.
4. Use Them on Handmade Cards
I am not somebody who thinks a handmade card needs seventeen layers of cardstock, six stamps and a calligraphy degree.
Give me nice paper, one pressed flower and a handwritten note.
Done.
Pressed flowers already have enough detail that you really don’t need to compete with them. A tiny pansy on a birthday card is beautiful. A little dried fern on a thank-you card. A few flowers from someone’s own garden on a Mother’s Day card. That last one especially.
If you have access to flowers from someone’s garden, press them without telling them and use them later.
That is the kind of tiny detail people remember.
5. Make a Botanical Journal From Places You’ve Been
This one is less “craft project” and more something I think would be incredibly cool to own ten years from now.
Make a journal of flowers and leaves connected to actual places.
A wildflower from a camping trip. Something from your backyard the first summer you lived there. A fern from a cabin weekend. Flowers from your kid bringing you a handful of weeds and insisting they’re beautiful.
Stick the pressed flower onto a page and write what it was, where you were and the date. That’s enough. You don’t have to scrapbook the hell out of it. In fact, I think it’s better if you don’t.
Imagine flipping through that journal years later and seeing an actual little piece of all those places.
That is exactly the kind of thing flower pressing is good at.
6. Make Pressed Flower Ornaments
Hear me out, because “pressed flower ornament” can go in two very different directions.
There is the glittery Christmas-craft version. And then there is basically tiny botanical artwork that happens to hang from a tree. I strongly prefer the second one.
A simple metal or wood frame, a few delicate flowers, maybe a thin ribbon. That’s it.
Where this gets really special is when the flowers mean something. Flowers from a wedding bouquet can become a first-Christmas-married ornament.
Flowers from a baby shower.
Flowers from a memorial arrangement.
Flowers from Grandma’s garden.
Every year when you unpack Christmas decorations, that flower comes back out with them. I love that.
7. Make a Floral Initial or Monogram
This is a project where restraint matters.
It’s really tempting to fill the entire letter with as many flowers as physically possible, but then the shape of the letter disappears.
I would start with smaller flowers and greenery and sketch or lightly trace the letter first. Then build along that shape.
You can use a first initial for a kid’s room, a couple’s initials for a wedding gift, a family last-name initial, whatever makes sense. And the flowers don’t all have to match. I just try to keep some consistency in the overall palette so it looks intentional instead of like I dumped my entire flower drawer onto an “M.”
8. Add Them to Gift Tags and Packaging
This is probably the best use for your tiny weird flowers.
You know the ones. Too small for a frame. One petal is missing. The stem snapped halfway down.
The flower is still pretty, but you’re not building a masterpiece around it. Put it on a gift tag.
A little pressed flower on kraft paper with simple twine makes basic wrapping look like you tried much harder than you actually did. Which I consider a win.
They’re especially pretty on gifts for bridal showers, birthdays, Mother’s Day or anything garden-related.
9. Make Pressed Flower Place Cards
If I were doing a garden party, bridal shower or small wedding, I would absolutely do this.
Write each person’s name on a simple card and add one tiny pressed flower.
Intentionally make them different. One person gets a little viola. Another gets a fern. Another gets a tiny blue flower. There’s something really charming about each one being its own little thing.
Plus, people can take them home afterward.
You have technically created a party favor without having to create a separate party favor.
10. Add Pressed Flowers to a Scrapbook — But Keep It Simple
I go back and forth on scrapbooks because they can become a LOT.
But I really like pressed flowers mixed with photographs because you’re adding something physical from the actual memory.
If you went camping, use a picture from the trip and one little flower you collected there.
If it’s a wedding album, add a pressed petal from the bouquet.
If it’s a gardening journal, include something from the first bloom.
You don’t need ten stickers explaining that it was the best day ever. The flower already tells the story.
One important thing: make sure your flowers are completely dry before putting them into anything you plan to keep closed long-term. A scrapbook is not where you want to discover that a flower was still holding moisture. Ask anyone who has ever opened something months later and found a mystery brown spot.
11.
Make Pressed Flower Resin Earrings
Pressed flowers and resin are a really good combination because the flowers are already flat, lightweight, and easy to position.
Small petals, tiny blooms, and little pieces of fern work especially well. This is also a great use for flowers that are too small to carry a larger project on their own.
The biggest thing I’ve learned with resin is that less is usually more.
It’s tempting to cram a whole bunch of flowers into one mold, but once the resin cures, all of that detail can turn into visual noise pretty quickly.
I’d rather use one small bloom, a few tiny petals, or a delicate piece of greenery and let it actually be visible.
You can make:
- Stud earrings
- Small drop earrings
- Teardrop shapes
- Hoops with floral inclusions
- Matching pendant and earring sets
Just make sure your flowers are completely dry before they go anywhere near resin. Any moisture left in the plant material can cause cloudiness, discoloration, or other problems once it is sealed inside.
And if a flower is a little imperfect? Even better.
A torn petal or asymmetrical bloom can look really beautiful once it’s suspended in resin.
12. Don't Make Anything Yet
Seriously.
You’re allowed to just collect pressed flowers. I think there is this pressure with crafts where every supply needs an immediate purpose. I pressed this flower, therefore I need to turn it into something.
Nope. Put it away.
I keep coming back to flowers later and liking them much more in a completely different context. You might press something in June and then realize in December that it is exactly the color you need for an ornament. Or you may eventually collect enough flowers from one particular place to make an entire piece from them.
Sometimes saving the flower is the project for now.
The rest can come later.
A Few Things I’ve Learned From Actually Making Things With Pressed Flowers
The really perfect flower is not always the most useful one.
This surprised me.
Sometimes the slightly curved stem is exactly what makes an arrangement work. Sometimes you need a little half-broken fern to fill a spot. Sometimes the flower that faded to this weird dusty color suddenly looks amazing next to something brighter. So I don’t sort my flowers into “perfect” and “garbage” anymore. Obviously, if something molded or completely fell apart, it’s done.
But imperfect? I keep that.
I’ve also learned to arrange with tweezers much earlier than I thought I needed to. Once you start working with really dry flowers, your fingers feel approximately the size of garden shovels.
And take pictures of arrangements before you commit.
I cannot tell you how many times I have moved everything around, decided I liked the earlier version better, and then had absolutely no memory of where everything had been. Your phone solves this problem.
You Don’t Have to Know What the Flower Is Going to Become
This is probably what I like most about pressing flowers.
The flower gets a second life, but you don’t have to decide what that life is immediately. You can press something simply because it was pretty. Or because somebody gave it to you. Or because you found it somewhere worth remembering.
Then later it might become artwork. Or a bookmark. Or an ornament. Or it might sit in a drawer for two years until the right project shows up. That’s fine.
The important part was saving it while you still could.
Because once that flower is dried up in the bottom of a vase, there really isn’t a great Plan B.
So when in doubt?
Put it in the press.
You can figure out the rest later.
Ready to Start Pressing?
You do not need to know exactly what you’re going to make before you start.
Press the flowers first. Save the ones that mean something. Experiment with the ones you’re curious about. Then come back to them when you’re ready to turn them into something.
Our reusable maple flower presses are made for exactly that — preserving garden flowers, wildflowers, bouquets, and everyday little blooms so you can keep creating with them later.
