Flower Pressing Supplies

Our all around everyday glue. If you just want to buy one glue to get started, this is a solid choice.

This glue is thickest of the 3 options. We use this for bigger flowers such as sunflowers, large roses, and peonies. We apply it to the "sturdier" parts of the flowers. We advise against using this glue on more delicate parts of the flower.

This glue is the thinnest and most spreadable glue. When you're looking for a nice even application of glue on the back of thin petals, such as cosmos or poppies (which do a really amazing job of showcasing all of your gluing imperfections) this is a good way to go. We use this for reconstructing flowers when working with the delicate petals. You can get away with using the Lineco glue for this application as well if you do not want to buy more than one glue.

While we don't use the hot glue gun often, it is useful in certain instances. We use this on heavier dried plants like Poppy Pods, sometimes strawflower, reconstructing king proteas, and other otherwise problematic plant material where you need a thicker than usual mass of glue to make something adhere to the backing.

While we don't love the use of spray glue because it's just SO FRIGGIN' WASTEFUL and has VOCs, it does unfortunately give the best look when working with super thin flowers (cosmos and poppies) in terms of leaving the least amount of glue marks. Please make sure to use a mask and be in a ventilated area when using because of the VOCs.

This knife originally made it's appearance in our home to cut our homegrown sprouts, but it's since been hijacked and has become a full member of our studio. We use this to splice flowers. We do like the small X-Acto No 1 Precision knife a bit more for cutting small stems in half.

This is a great knife for precision cutting. We use this a lot for splicing rose buds, delicate and thin stems, and for just cutting parts of the flower off that we do not need to press. We have been using this knife for over a year and have not had to replace the blade.

The mat allows for splicing of flowers but also if you are getting into cutting matboard and foam board for mounting and framing, this will come in handy. You can also use a cutting board to splice flowers and stems on.

We mainly use the ESD 10, 11, 12, and 14 but the other two can be worthwhile. I use these to pick up every single flower when designing, changing out paper in the presses, and gluing.

We love the maneuverability of smaller scissors for breaking down flowers. These are our go to scissors.

We stumbled upon a dehydrator for the purpose of drying flowers only because we already had one on hand to dry fruits and vegetables grown in our garden. Otherwise, I don't think it's anything we would have tried otherwise.

We never start anything in the dehydrator. We use it to help speed up the drying process for flowers that hold a lot of moisture such as floxglove, peonies, or snapdragon. A dehydrator is a convenience, not a necessity.

The 9 tray size allows for large presses with 8" carriage bolts to be put in there. We will be explaining more in detail about how we use this in our Summer 2023 Course and about temperatures.

Our love/ hate relationship product. We use this for about 1% of all our pressing. If used improperly, it will ruin your flowers (like melt them or burn them). It can be good for color retention on some flowers. It is very much an experimental tool that we bought to see what results we would have with it. I'm sure you could also probably rig up your own type of microwave pressing contraption.

We use about 20 sheets of paper for each layer in the press, so we have quite alot of paper but as a hobbyist, you will probably need less. It is necessary to make sure you have enough paper to change out your damp paper every day until the flowers are not sticking to the paper.

For 1 ream, I think there is a good price option on Amazon sold by HP. I could not include it here at it was not part of the Amazon affiliate program. If you go this route, be sure to do some simple math in your head about how much paper you will need. Hence why I put the 8 reams link on here. If you have 1 press stacked, you will easily use close to the 1 ream, and then you will need more paper to change out the damp paper every day for at least 5 days, but sometimes longer. If you buy 1 ream at a time, you will pay more in the long run. Paper is basically your gold when it comes to pressing flowers. You always want to have enough as to not have to reuse wet paper in your press.

We use chipboard on either side of the copy paper for each layer of flowers that we press.

We use Cardboard in our press layered with chipboard and copy paper.

We like to use one sheet of blotting paper on either side of flowers containing a lot of moisture.

We use these for all of our glass on glass framed originals.

We use a 23 gauge pin nailer to install our internal and outer wood spacers. If you have Milwaukee tools, then maybe use Milwaukee to use the batteries. Or use Dewalt. Or Makita. Or Craftsman. Or whatever. Cordless is key though for me.

1/2" pin nails. Depending on the profile of your frame, you may use larger pin nails, but make sure they are not too long so they do not exit the frame.

I have used this when cleaning off my glass and plastic sheets. Works great. Love it. Super easy to work with.

I have tested alot of rags and these were the only ones I foind to not leave cloth material on the glass.