We grew lots of flowers in our Asheville garden this summer and I picked and bookpressed or dried between screens LOTS of petals for papermaking. We incorporate the sheets into the pulp, though a great deal of “cheating” – repositioning and adding petals, anchoring with bits of pulp – is done to make them look good.
The petals are fragile and vulnerable to all kinds of problems, from drying to papermaking to drying again. I used a fan to quickly dry boards of petal sheets this year, since I was in a rush to use the petals. Usually, they cure for up to a year.
larkspur notecard
The cards have a writing sheet tipped inside and come with an all-deckle edge envelope. They are $4 apiece; a set of 5 in a ribbon is $17. You can check them our on our Etsy page, or order what you see here.
bee balm card
cornflower card
sunflower card
Each type has a little foliage included. The yellow card above has regular and Mexican sunflowers, black-eyed susan, and dried leaves of artimesia. If you take my class, you may bring about any 2-D material to put in your paper; we have a few surplus jars of petals you may dip into as well.
The Bibliophile- book arts & bibliomania 