by Barbie L.
April showers bring May flowers! After scattering wildflower seeds last year, my yard is in full bloom, and my kids are constantly picking pocketfuls of them. Wildflowers are great for pressing because they are less robust than the flowers you typically find in bouquets, so flatten and dry out easily. One of the most beautiful ways to display paper-thin pressed flowers is in a lightcatcher. My kids enjoyed the process of this craft and were delighted by the results!
PRESSING FLOWERS
Throughout childhood I used my family’s set of encyclopedias to press flowers. Although this is a time-honored tradition and a good way to teach patience, it takes several long weeks and can damage books. We wanted to make lightcatchers the same day we picked flowers, so we decided to press flowers the quick way instead: using an iron (it only takes a couple minutes!) You can find quick tutorials about various way to press flowers on FTD, so you can find the method that works best for your family.
MAKING LIGHTCATCHERS
Materials
- Black construction paper
- Round plates or bowls to trace for the borders of your lightcatcher
- Pencil
- Scissors
- Clear contact paper
- Pressed flowers
Instructions
- Decide how big you want your lightcatchers (I chose based on how many pressed flowers we had), and trace circles onto your black construction paper to delineate the inner opening and outer border of your lightcatcher. Cut out the inner circle, but leave the outer border intact for now; it’s much easier to deal with like this. You can also get creative and experiment with different shapes if a circle isn’t interesting enough!
- Cut two pieces of clear contact paper big enough to completely laminate your lightcatcher, covering at least to where you’ve traced its outer border.
- Peel the backing off the contact paper and place the backing on a table as if you were about to stick the contact paper back onto it. Place the construction paper over the backing so the hole you cut is completely over the backing. The side of the construction paper that’s face up will be the front of the lightcatcher so the side with pencil markings should face down. Carefully smooth the clear contact paper over the construction paper so it covers the hole and the outline of the lightcatcher. The backing should now be stuck to the part of the contact paper covering the hole, which will protect it until you’re ready for to stick on the wildflowers.
- Set your child up at a clean table with the pressed wildflowers and the construction paper frame you made, sticky side up. The side that’s facing down will be the front, so for best results explain to your child that the the prettiest side of the flower should face down, and that they should start with the smallest flowers and work their way up to the biggest ones. Now, peel off the backing and let them go for it! After they stick on their first flower you can pick up their paper to show them what it looks like from the other side to give them the idea.
- Once they’re done, carefully laminate the exposed side of the lightcatcher with another piece of contact paper to seal everything in.
- Now it’s time to cut the outer edge of the lightcatcher. I let my older child cut her own border, so it’s got some character, and that’s fine!
- To hang it you can either tape it directly to a window (beware: tape leaves a gnarly residue behind if it stays on a window for too long, especially if exposed to sunlight) or you can punch a hole in the frame and hang it from a string.
These are so beautiful when the sun shines through them! Your kids will be in awe, not to mentioned delighted that they got to preserve and display all the pretty flowers they picked.