How to Press Larkspurs
The Queen of all Flowers for Pressing
The Best flowers to Press
My next few articles will consist of a series about what I have found to be the best flowers for pressing.
We will start with Larkspurs as they are excellent for pressing.
Larkspurs come in wonderful colours; deep purple, azure blue, pale blue, bright rose, tones of red and lovely delicate shades of pink.
Larkspurs grow in long spikes with lots of individual flowers arranged around the stem.
Pick off the flowers from each larkspur spike and see to it that the tiny little green stem at the back of each little flower is removed. If you don’t remove this little stem it will show through the delicate paper-thin flower once it is pressed.
Then place the flowers face up on your sheet of pressing paper in rows.
This larkspur flower has been pressed. It is perfectly dry and is ready to use in a design.
Make sure that the flowers are positioned on the open sheet near you, leaving the top half to cover the flowers when the page is full. I will explain the “Pressed Flower Sandwich” in a forthcoming article.
Remember to pick buds at different stages of development and position them on the paper so that they come up in profile.
Two Pressed Larkspur Buds
It’s a good idea to press buds on a separate sheet of paper as the thickness of buds is different from the open flowers so different pressure is needed for them.
It is possible to press buds together with your open flowers if you are only doing a few at a time but the result will not be quite as even.
Here are two pink larkspurs that have been pressed and placed in a design with a bud and two baby rose leaves
