It’s hard to throw away flowers that are tied to an emotional event, but preserving an entire bouquet isn’t practical. I haven’t had a lot of luck with pressed flowers as they seem to lose their color and just crumble away unless they are put under glass and I knew that would just get packed away somewhere.
On top of that, you may have some other people for whom the flowers hold some significance – Mom of the bride or groom for example or a bereaved spouse. This was the solution that I came up with to create a keepsake that was space-saving and long-lasting.
I didn’t want to ruin the bouquets, so I plucked petals from the flowers with the brightest colors and tried to take a little from each bouquet. There are petals that were mostly from lilies, roses, statice, and daisies. Then I brought them home in a baggie to preserve for my loved ones.
As soon as I got home, I opened the baggie so the petals could breathe and not start molding. They sat there until the next day before I was ready to try my experiment.
The first thing I did was lay down wax paper on a wooden tv tray, then carefully poured out my petals and separated them into a single layer.
Then I left them in the sun to dry for about a week. They shrink up quite a bit.
The color retained wonderfully and even got a little deeper. Once all the petals were dry (the daisies took the longest) then I carefully arranged the petals into these tiny bottles by Tim Holtz
I chose them because I liked the variety of sizes. Another great set is this one.
I used a soft paint brush (and it’s tip) to position the flowers. 
To finish, I just put in the corks. You could fill the bottle with resin if you wanted, but I didn’t. These have held their color and look just like the day they were made for the last 6 months.
