3 Mistakes You’re Probably Making When Drying Flowers

Hey Flower Lover.

Ever feel like you’re giving it your all but still not happy with how your flowers are drying? 

You may already have all the basics down pat, so you feel stuck with turning your flower hobby into a successful business.

Or, you may have already started a floral preservation business, but you know you can do better. 

The truth is, floral preservation isn’t easy.  There are a lot of moving parts and it’s easy to make mistakes, especially in the beginning. 

We’ve helped hundreds of people along their floral preservation journey, and in the process have had the opportunity to peek under the hood of their business.  And in the process, I’ve seen some common mistakes crop up again and again. I’m pretty transparent with my mistakes, and I can tell you I’ve made pretty much every mistake I can think of in the early days of our business. 

In this post, I’m sharing 3 of the biggest flower drying mistakes most people make. My hope is that these will help you avoid months of trial and error, so you can fast-track your floral preservation business growth and save yourself some heart ache (and maybe some dollars too!) 

 

Mistake 1: Not storing your flowers properly

 

This is an easy mistake to make if you haven’t dried and stored flowers for a long time.

When I first started this business, I came up with a few different ways of storing my flowers- in notebooks, containers, laminating sleeves, and stationary drawers. 

None of these solutions worked for the climate I live in, and I ended up losing a bunch of flowers I had worked really hard to grow, press and dry. They all lost their colour, and some even grew mould. I had no idea that when you dry and press flowers, they don’t stay dry forever! Here’s a Tiktok I did earlier about this: 

How to solve it:

There really is only one foolproof way to store your flowers:

• In an air-tight container with some silica sand at the bottom. 

When flowers re-absorb the moisture in the air, they will lose their colour, and depending on the humidity in your climate, grow mould. I live in a particularly humid area, so it doesn’t take long for flowers to turn yucky here. 

Mistake 2: Not knowing enough about silica sand 

 

When purchasing silica sand online, it can seem like the manufacturers are selling you a magical product- sand! That dries flowers! That you can use over and over again! A dream product right? Well, sort of. 

One really important thing to know about silica sand is that it is pretty dangerous stuff- this isn’t usually talked about by the companies that sell it, but it’s something you should be aware of if you are planning on using it, especially if you plan on using it regularly as a part of your preservation business. You can listen to our podcast episode about the dangers of using silica sand here: 

Things to know:

• Silica Sand is a hazardous material and you should be wearing protective gear when working with it. 
• You need to recharge your silica sand- probably more than you think! 
• When you take your flowers out of sand, make sure you’re doing this outside, away from children and pets. 
• You will need an airtight container- like I mentioned in my Tiktok above, this one is really important! 

Mistake 3: Being too rough with your flowers

 

You’ve got your P.P.E, you’ve watched a million Youtube videos about drying flowers and you’ve done your first bouquet- but your flowers seem to be falling apart! Did you put them in silica sand for too long? Is your silica sand TOO charged? Did your bride give you crappy flowers? 

Nope, Nope and welllll… maybe. If your flowers are breaking apart when taking them out of silica sand, two things could be happening: 

1. Your brides flowers were quite old and nearing the end of their life anyway
2. You were a little rough with taking your flowers out of the silica sand. 

Once flowers are dried in silica sand, they are pretty crispy crunchy. They do hold their shape, but you still need to be gentle with them. Go slowly, tipping out your sand a little at a time into another bucket and take your time. When you’ve got most of your sand out, you can gently dig your flower out of the sand. 

The Wrap-Up

 

If you’ve been making these mistakes with flower drying, it’s not your fault. Flower drying is an art that requires a lot of patience, knowledge and skill.

Once you’re aware of the common mistakes, you can start making the changes you need to avoid damaging your flowers and make your resin pieces look better, right from the start. 

In fact, by reading this post you’ve just taken a huge step toward doing that. High-five! 

If you want my help with drying flowers, I invite you to check out our Beginner’s Guide to Drying Flowers–

It’s an 18 page PDF that will take you right through the basics of drying floral arrangements, using the most common methods in the floral preservation industry, and goes through a bunch of tips I wish I knew when I started! If you ever need specific help with drying flowers you can book a consultation call with me, or jump over to Tiktok and ask us a question over there. 

Grab your copy of the Beginner’s Guide to Drying Flowers Here!