An essential item on designer Pamela Macauley's annual to-do list is pressing flowers to create botanicals (catch her at the Canadian Home & Country Show this October). “It's a fantastic way to display finds from my walks,” she says fondly. Although framed botanical prints from herbariums have long been adorning drawing-room walls, Pamela would rather make her own, employing faux aging techniques and old scraps of linen to give her displays the patina of time. “It's my own illustrated history, with the pieces becoming family heirlooms-in-the-making.”
YOU WILL NEED:
- Fresh flowers and plants from your garden
- Blotting paper
- Heavy-duty watercolour paper
- Tea bagCoffee granules
- Matted frame
- X-acto knife
- Linen fabric
- Spray mount
- White glue
- Label
- Black calligraphy pen
- Masking tape
1. Pick the flowers for your herbarium on a dry day and place them between two sheets of blotting paper. Slide them between the pages of an old phone book and weigh it down with some other heavy books. Leave to dry thoroughly for two weeks.
2. Give the watercolour paper an aged look by soaking a tea bag in a bowl of boiling water and letting it cool a bit. Rub the tea bag over the page and blot away any excess colour with a paper towel. While wet, sprinkle coffee granules over it. You want a very subtle aged look. Let it dry.
3. Lay the matte face down on the back of the fabric and trim, leaving 1" around the outside and 1" extra on the inside. Place the fabric face down on a piece of newspaper and spray the back with spray mount. Position the matte on the fabric. Cut the corners of fabric on inside of matte at a 45-degree angle and then fold them over. Fold the outside edges over and trim any excess from the corners. Turn matte over and smooth out fabric.
4. Arrange your plants on the aged paper, leaving room for the label. Secure them with tiny dots of white glue, just enough to hold them in place. Write in the information on the label with a calligraphy pen. Glue the label in the bottom corner.
5. Place the matte in the frame and then the pressed flower page. Seal it with masking tape at the back.
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