14 Crafts to Make With Your Favorite Flowers
Celebrate or preserve your favorite blooms with these fresh flower crafts.
Ryan Liebe
If you believe flowers are some of Mother Nature's most stunning works of art, then it only makes sense that you'd want to use them in your own DIY masterpieces—and not just bouquets and arrangements. Let the shades, shapes, scents, and petals of your favorite blooms inspire you to complete one (or more) of these flower crafts, from pressed flower cards, keepsakes, and soaps to flowers preserved under glass or presented in custom holders. Each project offers a unique way to make nature's prettiest flowers the stars of your next handmade gift.
Related: 12 Paper Flower Crafts We Love
Pressed-Flower Bar Soap
Small fresh flowers, like wax flowers, spray roses, calendula, and lavender buds, add beauty and nourishing qualities when pressed for this bar soap craft. If you have sensitive skin, opt to use flowers that have little to no scent. For more fragrance, add essential oil (we like lavender) to this must-try soap recipe.
How to Make Pressed-Flower Bar Soap
Floral Soaks
This soak features several fragrant flowers: dried roses, calendula, and blue cornflowers. Paired with essential oils and mineral-rich Epsom and pink Himalayan salts, it's the ultimate stress-relieving gift.
Follow these steps to make the floral soaks:
Set aside several whole dried flowers to decorate vials, then combine salts, baking soda, and remaining flowers in a large bowl.
Using pencil eraser, slide a whole flower down the inside of a vial; add a few drops of water to "glue" it into place. Repeat to decorate vial with more flowers; then repeat with remaining vials.
Using funnel, fill vials with salt mixture. Add a few drops of essential oil to bottom of each cork; stop up bottles. (This will lightly scent the salts without clumping.)
Download and print labels on sticker paper; cut out. Place labels over corks to seal vials.
Keepsake Boxes
Press colorful flowers that naturally lay flat, like pansies, on wooden boxes for a blooming keepsake. To make the craft, pick up each flower one at a time, paint a little glue on its spot on the box, replace the flower, and brush it with glue, from the center out. Finish with several all-over protective coats. As everything dries, visible brushstrokes will disappear.
Decorative Tray
This tray is a true masterpiece for a table centerpiece, thanks to pressed blooms découpaged on the piece. Arrange the flowers in your preferred design, then pick them up one at a time, brush the backs gently with craft glue from the centers out, and plant each back in position.
Add a trailing ribbon, and protect your work with several coats of découpage glue or clear resin on top. Top the tray with a pitcher of dried flower tea at your next afternoon lunch party.
Fragrant Bath Salts
Give the gift of relaxation with these flower-infused bath salts. This craft combines lavender flowers, rose petals, chamomile, and lavender essential oils for a fragrant mixture you can package in an airtight container.
How to Make Fragrant Bath Salts
May Day Baskets
Celebrate spring with a modernized version of a May basket. Fill a bag, hanging cone, or other pretty container with flowers from your yard, add a cheerful garland, and surprise your neighbors by leaving the gift on their doorknob or porch.
Learn More About May Day Baskets
Pressed Flower Card
Pansies, violas, and verbenas are pressed to decorate handmade paper cards. Add your own well-crafted sentiment to create a treasured keepsake.
How to Press Flowers and Leaves
3D Canvas Wall Art
Full disclosure: This 3D floral canvas uses silk blooms, not real ones. But that means it's a fade-proof way to make a bold artistic statement in your entryway, living room, or bedroom. Copy the blooms used in a favorite birthday or anniversary bouquet to preserve the memory (even when you can't preserve the petals).
How to Make 3D Canvas Wall Art
Bloom-Filled Cloche
Protect and display delicate blooms under a petite cloche. Use floral clay on the bottom of a flower-pin frog to secure it inside of a small, sturdy cup. Fill three-quarters of the cup with water. Set a glass cloche next to it, so you know how high the blooms should be, then cut flowers and greenery and stick them onto the pins.
To finish, set the cup on a plate and cover it with the cloche. Check the water daily—the display can last about a week.
Flower Cones
Carnation cones are a sweet way to present a bouquet of these underrated flowers. Create the easy carnation bouquets pictured by simply printing our clip art onto heavyweight paper and cutting it out. Then, fold the printed clip art into a cone shape and fasten at the tabs using double-sided tape. Finish by binding the stems with floral tape and setting the carnations—preferably in sherbert-inspired shades—inside of the cone.
Flowers Preserved in Resin
When you preserve fresh flowers in resin, you can create coasters, jewelry holders, paperweights, and other one-of-a-kind art pieces—all while keeping your blooms as fresh and vibrant as the day they were cut.
How to Preserve Flowers in Resin
Floral Wax Sachets
These pretty wax sachets are a flame-free alternative to scented candles, perfect for dorm rooms, offices, and kids' rooms. Melt wax flakes into molds, add a blend of essential oils (like lavender and chamomile or grapefruit and rosemary), and position pressed flowers that set into place as the wax hardens.
How to Make Floral Wax Sachets
Mini Wreath
Small floral wreaths are another simple way to show off your favorite spring flowers. These mini grapevine wreaths are decorated with dried flowers and grasses, including silver daisies, starflowers, and natural lepidium.
Learn How to Make a Mini Floral Wreath
Flower Crown
A flower crown is the perfect headpiece for a flower girl or bouquet replacement for an outdoorsy bride. Craft this one by using floral tape to secure oversized blooms to a ring of floral wire.
