Dried flowers have the following characteristics:
1. Raw materials are available everywhere. Plants used to make dried flowers are rich in sources.
2. Dry flowers with natural and simple posture are made of plant materials, which have the natural charm of plants and maintain the original color and shape of plants.
3. Easy to use and manage. Dried flowers can keep their shape and color for a long time.
4. The creation is arbitrary, the application scope is wide, the dried flowers are not limited by preservation conditions, and the creative means of dried flower decorations are flexible and convenient.
First of all, the collection of flowers: the collection time of flowers is 9:00- 1 1:00 in the morning. When there is no dew, the flowers and plants themselves contain moderate moisture, and it is easy to keep fresh, dry and dehydrated after collection. In the afternoon, most flowers and plants are wilting, so it is not suitable for collection. You can choose the first bud, or you can choose the leaves that are completely open. You should choose fresh green leaves, but sometimes you need mature dark green leaves. Collected flowers and plants should be treated immediately or placed in a cool place, such as sorting flowers and putting them in bags for preservation.
Dried flowers refer to plant products with lasting ornamental value made from petals, leaves, branches, fruits, seeds, roots and other plant materials through dehydration, color preservation, shaping and other processes. Dried flowers include plane dried flowers and three-dimensional dried flowers.
Flat dried flowers, also called embossing, refer to the color retention of plant materials. Plant products made by pressing, shaping and drying, such as bookmarks, greeting cards, invitations and dried flower paintings.
Making plane crafts: When making for the first time, you can draw a sketch on the cardboard or lens with a pencil according to your own materials and pictures in picture books or magazines, and then carefully paste it with a brush dipped in glue. Don't dip too much glue, otherwise it will affect the beauty of the picture. Paste and air dry naturally. If there is a plastic plane film sealing machine, you can also seal the plastic film on the card or lens after the picture is assembled, which will increase the storage time and make it more beautiful. After making for a period of time, with aesthetic feeling and practical experience, we can also innovate and design new patterns, such as landscapes, plants, animals, people and so on. Come and paste.
Three-dimensional dried flowers, also known as dried flowers, refer to plant products made of plant materials by color preservation or artificial shaping, such as brooches, bouquets, garlands and flower baskets. The making of bouquets. Put the dried flowers in the shade, tie them into bouquets with ribbons and put them in vases. Flowers, such as wheat straw chrysanthemum, can be glued to the treated wheat straw again, or fine wire can be inserted into the flower clip to form a flower. In order to make the bouquet beautiful, it can also be matched with dried green bristlegrass, reeds, bamboo and so on. And then tie it into a bouquet with ribbons, which is a beautiful handicraft. The flowers of the grass chrysanthemum should be picked at the initial flowering stage, while the Limonium sinense and the amaranth flowers must be picked at the full bloom.
Some flowers will darken or change color after drying, especially red will turn purple, and the original pink will turn purple. For these flowers that are difficult to keep color, we should keep color. In order to keep the color of dried flowers beautiful, it is necessary to protect the color of flowers by chemical color protection, physical color protection and dye color protection. Chemical color retention is a method to maintain or change the chemical structure and properties of the original pigment through the chemical reaction between chemicals and plant pigments. Commonly used chemicals are citric acid, tartaric acid, copper sulfate, aluminum sulfate, tin chloride, zinc chloride, sucrose and so on. Chemical color retention methods can be divided into color flower color retention method, green material color retention method and mosaic living body color absorption method. The principle of physical color protection is to maintain the original color of plant materials by controlling external factors such as illumination, temperature, humidity and oxygen content in dry media. Physical color protection methods include: high temperature decompression color protection, low temperature decompression color protection, microwave drying color protection and so on. Dye color retention method is to bleach the flowers first, and then color them with corresponding dyes to make them more ornamental. Most of the three color protection methods are used together, which makes the color of flower materials more vivid and the effect more prominent.
For example, the red color of red petals is mainly presented by anthocyanins. Anthocyanins change color with different pH values, red when acidic, purple when neutral and blue when alkaline. Anthocyanin pigment can form a complex with some metal ions, thus stabilizing the pigment. Whitening is a pigment extracted from white petals, which is a yellowish or colorless flavonoid. Flavonoids are phenolic pigments, which are easy to oxidize and turn into brown precipitates after a long time in the air. Flavonoids change color due to different pH values. The stronger the acidity, the lighter the yellow color becomes, the stronger the alkalinity, and the deeper the color change.
Dyeing Some flowers are elegant in color, which can be dyed into different colors by living absorption of flowers according to production needs. Use fresh flower branches or stems with flowers, insert them into warm water bottles prepared with edible pigments or anthocyanidins (the ratio is 1: 100, or depending on the required color depth), and the time varies from half an hour to several hours, or even longer, so that they can absorb water while inhaling the dye, so that the dye solution is evenly distributed in the flowers, and then take out the flower materials to dry in the shade after the color is inhaled. According to the needs of the production materials, the concentration and dyeing time of the pigment can be adjusted at will to make it partially or completely dyed. This method is simple, the dyeing is uniform, it has the effect of natural molding, and the color after pressing is beautiful and stable.
The color-protecting flower material needs to be further dried to become a semi-finished product. There are many drying methods, including natural drying, buried drying, liquid drying, vacuum drying, heating drying, pressure drying, microwave drying, low temperature drying and so on.
1. Natural air drying method: the most primitive and simple drying method refers to the method of removing water from plant materials by natural air circulation. Most of the plant materials used for drying are flowers with high cellulose content, low water content, small flower pattern and short stems, such as cycads, green bristlegrass, Solanum lyratum Thunb, sunflowers, cockscomb, sorghum and ears of grain. Among them, plant materials with soft branches and big flowers, such as amaranth, chrysanthemum, cockscomb and sunflower, are suitable for hanging and drying. Plant materials, such as pods, ears of wheat, ears of rice, pinecones, etc. With soft branches and heavy spikes, it is suitable for flat sun.
2. Heating drying method: a drying method of properly heating plant raw materials to promote accelerated evaporation of water. Ovens, flower dryers and microwave ovens are often used for heating and drying. Because the heating drying method can greatly shorten the drying time, it is of great benefit to improve the quality of dried flowers, and the plant material with high water content has better effect! This method is fast and color-preserving, but some plant materials are not resistant to high temperature, and some plant pigments are easy to change color when heated in microwave oven, which is not suitable for heating and drying.
3. Low-temperature drying method: drying method with dry cold air above 0℃ and 10℃ as drying medium. Because low temperature has a strong inhibitory effect on enzyme activity, dried flowers can maintain good color, but their water evaporation is slow, which requires good ventilation and dehumidification equipment and takes a long time to treat. Plant materials originating in tropical and subtropical regions are not cold-resistant, not cold-resistant, and not suitable for low-temperature drying.
4. High-pressure drying method: a drying method that gives plants proper pressure to keep their beautiful shapes. At present, this method is used to make plane relief. Commonly used are heavy stone embossing method and specimen embossing method. After finishing or decomposing plant materials, spread them evenly on absorbent paper, cover them with absorbent paper, and put enough absorbent paper between each layer of plants. The absorbent paper of plant materials is stacked between multiple layers, pressed from above with stones or clamped from both sides with specimen clips, then dried in the sun, and the plants are taken out after drying. Pay attention to the proper pressure when operating, so as to avoid the flowers and absorbent paper sticking too tightly and being difficult to take off. In addition, the absorbent paper should be replaced to avoid mildew of plant materials caused by excessive internal humidity. The pressing method is suitable for the leaves and decomposed flowers of plane flowers and plant materials such as pansy, cherry blossom, cornflower, cosmos and hydrangea.
5. Buried dry method: the method of burying the flower material with fine granular setting materials. Commonly used coagulation materials are river sand, salt, perlite and so on. Cut off the flower head of the flower material, insert the thin and hard twigs such as lead wire or bamboo into the broken part of the flower stem, put them in a container, then slowly and carefully pour the completely dried setting material into the container to submerge the flower material, then put the container in a dry and ventilated place and take it out after the design is dry. This method is suitable for large flowers with high water content such as rose, Chinese rose, peony and peony, and it is difficult to maintain the rigid effect. The general drying method is difficult to maintain the beautiful shape due to the shrinkage of plant materials.
6. Liquid preparation drying method: a drying method for treating plant materials with hygroscopic and nonvolatile organic liquid preparations. Glycerol is often used to treat flowers. Flowers can be inserted or soaked in glycerol, so that plant materials can absorb water in glycerol instead of materials. The method uses liquid reagents to replace water in plant materials. Because of its non-volatility and durability, plant materials keep more liquid substances in their tissues, which increases the internal expansion pressure of plant tissue materials, thus maintaining the rigid effect of plant materials to a certain extent and keeping them fresh. The made flower material has luster, soft texture, unique artificial color, very elegant and beautiful appearance, and is suitable for all kinds of flower materials.
7. Vacuum drying method: put the flower material to be treated into a sealed container with a certain degree of vacuum, so that the water in the flower material can be evaporated or sublimated quickly, thus obtaining dried flowers. Vacuum drying time is shorter than natural air drying time.
8. Microwave oven drying method: This method uses a certain frequency of microwave to treat the flower material, because it has strong penetration ability, and the heating process of the flower material is internal and external heating, so the flower material can be evenly dried. Microwave drying efficiency is extremely high, which can shorten the drying time by ten or one hundred times, which is very beneficial to ensure the quality of dried flowers.
Dry flower materials are easy to break and fall off, so different materials can be selected according to different needs and different methods can be used to repair them, so as to achieve better ornamental effect. For example, if the flower branch is short, it can be grafted with natural branches, and the iron wire can be inserted in the vacuum stem and replaced with green iron wire; Where there are few leaves, natural leaves can also be grafted, and plastic leaves can also be replaced. The processed dried flowers can be used for bottle insert molding, or placed in a sealed glass container after molding, or made into exquisite dried flower cards. You can also make flowerpots from roots, stems and fruits of some plants, flowerpots from sawdust, bamboo chips and bark, and flower baskets from wicker and rattan. These carved products are of high artistic and ornamental value.
Pay attention to the preservation of dried flowers after production:
1. Moisture-proof dried flowers will be moldy and black when they are wet, which will affect the appreciation value of dried flowers. Dry flowers that are not used for the time being should be packed in cartons and placed in a ventilated place. The bottom of the box should be padded to a height of more than cm from the ground, and the dried flowers inserted in the vase should be checked regularly. It should also be placed in a ventilated place, not in a damp place or an unventilated corner. Selenium should be dried frequently to prevent mildew. Especially in the rainy season, more attention should be paid to moistureproof.
2. Anti-fading dry flowers should pay attention to keep the dyed color, which is the original design color. Sunlight exposure is the main reason for fading. Therefore, when placing dried flowers, try to avoid too strong light.
3. Dried flowers should be dustproof, so as not to affect the color. You can always wipe it with a dry cloth or clean it with electric wind to keep the appreciation value.
As a unique decorative art form, dried flowers are beautifying people's lives from different angles and levels, and are increasingly favored by people.