The Practice of Flower Pressing and Art of Botanical Collage
Workshop Fee: $300.00
For centuries, we have pressed flowers; both as historical record as well as for the joy of it. Over the years, we have saved treasured flowers in books; delighting in finding these sweet botanical mementos years later. In this workshop we take flower pressing out of the book and into presses with an eye toward creating artwork to frame, share and enjoy for years to come.
This workshop is an introduction to pressing flowers, and creating intimate botanicals collages with your pressed flowers and simple framing. Our time together begins with touring the gardens where we discuss best practices for collecting, botanicals that press best, and how to collect with an eye to creating botanical collages.
After garden touring with Head Gardner, Helen Westergren, we go to the studio to press flowers from the Sanborn Mills Farm gardens. We cover the steps to successful flower pressing: materials for pressing, press set-up, choosing the best botanicals, flower processing, and the process of pressing from start to finish. Since the flowers participants press during the workshop will be curing in Flora-Ly presses and studio, flowers pressed during the workshop will be mailed to participants 6-8 weeks after the workshop.
In preparation for this workshop, flowers from the Sanborn Mills Farm gardens were pressed during the summer of 2024, yielding an abundant library of pressed botanicals to create with. These are the flowers you are using to learn and create botanical collages. We delve into the artistic ways to approach botanical collage, basics of good design, botanical collage construction, and finishing. Our creative time together concludes with the creation of a small herbarium book to have as a record of this sweet weekend in July when you joined in this centuries old practice of pressing flowers.
Skills and Techniques:
- How to forage and cut botanicals
- How to press and preserve botanicals
- How to create and construct botanical collages
- How to finish botanical collages with framing
- How to create a herbarium book
Materials Fee: SMF will collect $20 for flowers at check in. $90 paid directly to the instructor covers one 11 X 14 frame with glass, herbarium books, and postage to mail pressed flowers back to students. Students will have the option to purchase a gorgeous custom-made travel press complete with papers and board for $55.
Special Tools or Equipment: Dress comfortably, bring an apron, shoes/boots for morning garden walking, notebook and pencil for sketching and taking notes.
Workshop Policies: Please be sure to read our 2025 policies before you register for a workshop which can be found here Workshop Policies
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