Drying flowers with silica

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A couple of years ago I bought a container of silica granules from Lee Valley used for drying flowers 3-dimensionally. At the time I had all kinds of plans/ideas for projects/arrangements to do with various flowers particularly the ones growing on our property yada yada…I tend to have a lot of creative ideas but not a lot of time for follow through with 3 kids & a jewelry business…plus a growing love for the fiber arts. 🙂

My girls really enjoy picking flowers mostly everything ankle high; although they’d have at your flower bed if you let them. 😉 So with a growing number of little flowers coming my way daily, and the “I wish I could keep them forever” lament, I decided to dry them & finally try out those silica granules.

I also have a flower press, and we have done projects with it in the past, but never the 3-D way. These are small so they took no time to dry, we let them sit for approx. 3 days at a time. I put half the amount in these glass bowls we use for crafting, carefully arranged the flowers on top, and then poured in more silica burying the flowers with it. I did this process as I did not want my littles eating silica gel…that would be very, very bad…

So now the question is…what to do with them? They are small, so the only thing I have come up with thus far is setting them in resin…maybe making the girls pendants out of them…I can’t seem to think much past the jewelry making aspect…any suggestions of projects are welcome…otherwise, google, here I come… 😉

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