How To Press Flowers Using Books

Greetings everyone! One of my favorite ways to add some spirit and life to the pages of my book of shadows is to press flowers and then add those pressed flowers to the spell pages. When I discovered this as a way to add some decor and magical properties to my pages I have become obsessed with it.
With Spring just in full bloom I figure this is an excellent activity for you to partake in!

I am going to be doing this series in 4 parts. Part one will be using books to press the flowers, part two will be a tutorial on making your own flower press, part three will be how to press flowers using the flower press from the flower press tutorial and the last part will be how to glue them or other ways to add them to your Book of Shadows and its magickal pages!

So let's get started with the first part, using heavy hardcover books that you hopefully have around the house to press your flowers.

You will need the following Supplies:

• Freshly picked flower(s)
• 1 hardcover book 
• about 20-30 lbs of additional books or heavy objects
• Wax Paper, Coffee Filters, Paper Towels with no dents or patterns or Tissue paper*
• Post It Notes or Paper
• Pen

*You can use newspaper as well but be mindful that the ink from newspaper comes off very easily and most likely will transfer onto your flower. This might be a good look or it might not so be careful if you decided to go that route.

To Press The Flowers:

1. Pick your flower and the fresher the better. You can pick the flower and put it in water if you aren't able to press it right away.
2. Pull off any damaged petals that you would not want in your finished product.
3. Open the hardback book, somewhere near the back so you can use the weight of the paper as well
4. Put the flower between either your flattened and smoothed out coffee filters, your paper towels or tissue paper. Make sure they are smooth with no wrinkles or dents, as the wrinkles will be transferred to the flower or plants. You should not use regular notebook or copy paper as the paper is not thin enough to absorb the moisture from the plant and dry out the petals, leaves, ect.
5. Once you have the flower or plant positioned exactly as you would like it to be on your page, slide the paper towel or coffee filter with the flower on it onto the page of the book. Make sure there is a paper towel, filter or piece of tissue paper between the pages of the book and the flower - this includes the top. You want the flower to be sandwiched between the tissue paper, filter or paper towel.
6. Close the book and apply pressure to flatten the flower. Make sure that you put the thickest part of the flower closer to the spine of the book. 
7. You may also want to let some of the paper stick out of the book as a bookmark so you know where the flower is. You will need to check on it from time to time and it would not be good to lose the flower in the book!
8. Next, put heavy materials ontop of the closed book to help flatten the flower. You can put weights, books, boxes, ect if you don't have a flower press or vice grip. If you want to do this often you should invest in a flower press. I'm cheap and I won't do that as I have really heavy books that do the job real well.
9. Take your piece of paper or post it note and write down the date you pressed each flower. If you have multiple flowers of different varieties make sure that you label them where you have them pressed too. For Example, I had 6 of the same color hibiscus but I pressed each flower on a different day. It would be easy to lose track of which one I picked on which day. So I put a post it note on the back of the book where I was pressing the flower and wrote "08/03/13" so I would know that was the flower I picked and pressed so when I went to check on it 7 days later or 3 weeks later that I didn't confuse it with the identical flower I pressed on "08/13/13" that was 3 pages in front of it. Does that make sense?
10. The amount of time you leave your flowers will depend on their girth. If you have a very thick flower or flower buds it will take longer to completely dry out than a very thin flower. The minimum drying time is 4-6 weeks. For thick flowers like roses I recommend 3-6 months drying time. Just write the date down and keep checking on them every week. I like to do "flower checks" every Sunday unless it is a flower I picked the day before. Obviously, I don't need to check that one.

Once your flower is pressed you can leave it in the book between the pages until you are ready to use it. You don't want to damage the flower because they will be very brittle. I've had flowers that were parts of buds and still attached to the stem break off from the stem. I had to glue the flower so it still looked like it was in the stem!

I also have a composition book where I leave my pressed flowers in until they are ready to use. On that page I typically write the date they were originally pressed, their name and some tidbits about the flower. For example, I have a few rose petals that I've labeled "09/03/13 Red and White Rose Petals. Use in love spells or spells on blossoming friendship." Then I just place the petals in there. I have other ones that I glued to wax paper and I put those on the backside of that paper so when I turn the page I will see more petals but with a different texture.

Next week I will continue with the tutorial on how to make your own flower press so you can read your books instead of using them to press flowers!