When my husband and I got married, I knew that I wanted to get crafty with some of the “physical memories” from the wedding. I asked the seamstress to save the scraps from my dress, I even saved the scraps from his suit hemming, but I was most excited about the flowers.
Our flowers were beautiful. The bouquets were packed with color and texture. I saved as much as I could from mine and a bridesmaid’s, plus my husband's boutonniere. Since I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with them in the end, I dried half of the bouquets whole and pressed the other half in books before they wilted.
After a good amount of research, I finally got the idea to use my pressed petals on a resin tray and some of the whole flowers, along with scraps from my dress in Christmas ornaments.
I started with the ornaments and made six total. We kept two and the four others were given to our parents and grandparents for Christmas. They were easy to make and turned out beautiful. In fact the hardest part was finding clear ornaments that opened in the middle vs. through the top so that I could get everything in without crushing the flowers. A little bit of mod podge to stick the dress pieces to the sides and voilà, done! On some, I even looped the ribbon that had held my bouquet together through the top instead of a hook.
The tray was a little more difficult. First, it took months to find a base tray that I liked. Originally I’d wanted to layout the petals in a specific way to make some sort of pattern, so I wanted a tray with a see through bottom where I could rest a pattern underneath to follow. I finally found one at Cost Plus World Market (shout out, I LOVE that store).
I got to work, but that pattern idea? It quickly fell apart.
I tried to do ombre fading as I lay the petals on the tray, but there were too few of one, too many of another. Plus, one of the most beautiful things about the bouquets was their diversity. The petals from each flower were a different size and a different shape. Which is what had made them beautiful. So I decided to roll with that.
After I had carefully separated the petals based on type and size, I shuffled them all together. GENTLY, very gently. I mixed them up so that they created a mosaic of colors, sizes, and textures. I’d pressed some of the leaves and greenery as well and added them, but I left gaps here and there so that the petals’ edge could clearly be seen and to let light flow through. I’m making this sound more complicated than it was I promise. Basically I put all the petals on the tray and added the greenery. The hard part actually came next.
The resin. Oh resin. I’m still learning my way around resin. Sometimes I love it, sometimes it’s a complete frustration. For this project it was both. My first round of resin (yes, there were two), went okay. I set up a table using a bubble level to make sure it was absolutely 100% level. I mixed well, I poured, I used a set of wooden takeout chopsticks to make sure all of the petals sank beneath the surface and to move them if needed. I checked in every 15 minutes for the first hour of drying to pop any bubbles that had risen to the surface with a toothpick.
It went great. It looked GREAT. It wasn’t.
It was sticky. For anyone who has messed up resin you know what I mean. It feels dry, it looks dry, but anything you put on it sticks or creates an imprint. When you ran your hand over it, instead of the smooth cool, solid plastic feeling you expected, you encountered a slight resistance. Almost as if the surface wasn’t as smooth as it looked and was porous somehow.
I ended up having to redo it.
One redeeming feature of resin though, is that a “redo” is not always as scary as it sounds. I sanded down the top of the resin surface to create scratches that the new resin could bind to. Then I cleaned the dust off really well, first with water and then with alcohol. At that point it had such a cloudy scratched look I was panicking, but I moved forward, trusting what I’d read and watched online. I mixed the new batch of resin (tips that I think really made a difference below) and followed my previous method of ensuring a completely flat table, popping bubbles etc.
It worked!
Quick details:
Project thoughts:
This project was difficult but 100% worth it. Our families loved the ornaments and it means so much to hang them on our tree every year. The tray turned out great and although it gave me a lot of trouble, it is beautiful. I just wish we were fancy and had occasions to use it more!
Pearl Tips:
- Pour the two different parts of the resin into separate plastic cups first. Then pour them into a third plastic cup to mix. This protects against there being more of one thing than the other, but more importantly it helps ensure that there’s not extra mixture on the sides and bottom of the cup that don’t get mixed enough
- On that same note: MIX MIX MIX. You want to mix resin more than you’ve ever mixed anything in your life.
- Takeout chopsticks are great craft tools to have around
Lessons learned:
- Mix the resin. I cannot say this enough.
- Organized chaos can be more beautiful than perfect structure
How I'd do it differently next time:
- I don’t think I’ll be doing this one again. Maybe in the future? But wedding flowers are such a precious thing that the risk of messing up a friend’s flowers trying to do this for them is scary.