One of my dearest friends got married in the most glorious surprise wedding (best surprise ever)! I was asked to take the bouquet home and preserve it for her so I decided to try my hand at putting the flowers in resin so that they would last forever. The project turned out great! This is how I did it:
The first thing that I did was put the flowers in water with a little baking soda overnight so that they perked back up after being wrapped up and out of water all day. Once the flowers were back in peak condition I separated them and cut off the pieces that I wanted to use, plus some extra pieces for testing purposes. I needed to get them dry quickly. There are several ways to dry flowers. The traditional methods are to hang them upside down or to press them in a book. I needed them to be as flat as possible since I wanted to put them inside the molds (which were very thin) but pressing them in a book takes a long time so I opted to flatten and dry them in the microwave.
The process was really easy. I started with a few test pieces to get the timing right. I set the flowers between two paper towels directly in the microwave. Then I carefully placed a microwave safe glass baking dish on top to apply some pressure to get them to flatten. The suggested time was anywhere from 10 – 30 seconds so I did a few test runs to get the timing right. 25 ended up being perfect. Once they were done I removed them from the paper towels and they were perfectly flat, dry, and ready to use. It couldn’t have been simpler.
I purchased all of my materials from amazon.
Once I decided on which molds I wanted to use (one rectangular and one round) I laid out the flowers in the pattern I wanted and took a photo to use for reference in case they got out of place. The resin I bought was a 1:1 ratio and was easy to measure and mix. The kit came with a measuring cup and stirs. Before I started pouring the resin I made sure to place everything on the rubber mat that came with the kit. I measured and poured in small batches. I used a small kitchen torch to pop any bubbles that formed in the resin. The flowers did move around a lot in the resin before It started to cure. I watched them constantly and used a straight pin to put them back in place. In retrospect I think I would have started with a small layer of resin in the tray and then placed the flowers on top once it was a little tacky. Then I would have added a second layer of resin once the first part had cured enough for the flowers to stay in place. Hindsight :).
I let the resin cure on a flat surface for about 48 hours before I removed the molds. Up until that point they were still slightly pliable. After I removed the molds they felt solid but I let them sit another several days with the molds off. The internet said that resin needs weeks to completely cure, and I found that to be accurate.
My friend is an incredible baker. I thought it would be appropriate to turn the round tray into a cake stand. I found a glass candlestick at a local store that I wanted to use as the base. I was able to use the leftover resin to affix the two pieces together. It worked perfectly! The rectangular mold came with gold handles and hardware. It was easy to use a drill to mount them to the resin tray.
All together the project was a success. I highly recommend trying it if you have something special that you are wanting to keep!
