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By Shan Yonamine

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DIY floral arrangement and vase

Try this quick and simple flower arrangement if you want to add some extra life and color to your home this spring.

Preserving your precious petals

I’m not a flower person, but I recently received a bouquet of a dozen white roses and throwing them away after they died just seemed like such a waste. So instead of letting them wither, I decided to try my hand at drying them.

Now we’ve all heard of smashing petals between phone books and dictionaries, but I wanted to explore some other ways of preserving flowers, so I looked to the World Wide Web for inspiration and found three different methods, varying in effectiveness, to share with you.

The first was something a bit unconventional: the microwave method. Now I know sticking your precious petals in a high-wattage cooking machine may seen scary, but if done properly they’ll be dry in no time.

All you have to do is spread the petals out on a plate and microwave them on high for a minute and they should dry up in no time. If they’re still damp the first time you take them out, microwave them again for another minute. It’s important to not keep them in the microwave too long or they’ll burn.

The second method seemed to make a little more sense: sun-drying. All you have to do is lay the petals out in a place that is exposed to sun but not wind and they’ll dry up in a few days. I liked this method better than the microwave because it better preserved the rose’s color.

My final and favorite method is the hairspray method, which allows you to preserve a whole flower. Cut the flower at its stem and spray it thoroughly with any kind of hairspray that you have lying around. Then, hang the flower upside-down to dry for about a week on a clothesline or hanger. The entire bud will be preserved.

Rather than throwing away that prom corsage or wasting that wristlet, try drying them and pressing them in a scrapbook or putting them in a picture frame. There are tons of thing you can do with your newly preserved petals, so be creative and happy crafting!

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Check out more of Shan Yonamine’s crafts on Tumblr >>>

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