Flower and Leaf Preservation
Time: One hour or more
Materials needed:
- Old phone book
- Collection of colorful leaves, grasses, flowers, herbs
- Craft glue
- Plain note cards/postcards/watercolor paper
Collect any attractive flowers, leaves, grasses, and herbs. At home, separate each stalk or blossom, and place between the pages of the phone book. Use a different page for each specimen, spacing them well apart from each other. Place the phone book in a cool, 
dry place for a week to ten days. Your leaves will then be totally dry and ready for use.
Carefully apply craft glue, just a dab, to the back of your dried leaf or flower. Center it on a note card for a single design or place several as a collage on a sheet of watercolor paper, which can later be framed.
Your phone book/leaf press can be used over and over again. Flowers may be stored in them for several months.
Did You Know?
In Victorian times people planted decorative gardens and often preserved their herbs and flowers in a leaf press.
Certain flowers were thought to mean certain things: rosemary for remembrance; roses for undying love; lavender for devotion; oak leaves for strength. A notecard that used the fragrant language of flowers conveyed more than words.
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