Dried Flower Crafts: What
to Make from a Craft Box
One box of dried flowers, half a dozen things to make with it. Wreaths and garlands, a quiet arrangement held on a flower frog, and a bag of petals that goes further than you would think. The one skill worth learning, and the kit you actually need.
There is a smell to the drying barn in late autumn that we look forward to all year: dusty and sweet, a little like hay and a little like a spice drawer. It comes off a whole summer's worth of flowers hung upside down from the rafters, and by November it is time to do something with them. A wreath on the door is the obvious answer, but it is far from the only one, and a box of dried material will carry you through a season of making for next to nothing.
This is the making-and-styling half of the story. We will not cover drying the flowers here, because we did that in full back in the summer in Drying Flowers – A Complete Masterclass. This picks up with a box of dried flowers on the kitchen table and turns it into things worth keeping: a wreath, a garland, an arrangement, and a handful of smaller petal crafts, honestly and without a shopping list of things you do not need.
The Short Version
Start With
A craft box, or your own drying line
The One Skill
Small posies, roof-tiled
No Need For
Glue gun or floral foam
For Arrangements
A kenzan flower frog, no water
Petals Do
Confetti, candles, cards, potpourri
It Lasts
A year or two, out of sun and damp
Start With a Box
The hardest part of dried flower craft is not the making, it is having the right material to hand in the right amounts. A whole stem of statice is wonderful in a vase and far too long for close work; what you want for crafting is short heads, pods and little sprigs, in a mix, ready to bind and place. That is exactly what our Dried Flower Craft Box is: around fifty short heads, seed pods and stems, chosen for the kinds of projects on this page, so there is no unpicking of long bunches before you can begin.
If you grow and dry your own, the box simply tops you up, and a bunch or two from the wider dried flower range fills any gaps. Two smaller items earn their place alongside it and open up most of what follows: a kenzan flower frog for standing stems in a bowl without foam, and a bag of dried flower petals for the smaller crafts. Between the three you have the makings of a whole winter's worth of projects.
The Simple Kit
Across every project on this page the kit is short, and most of it is already in a drawer. There is no need for a glue gun, floral foam or a floristry course.
- Fine florist's wire on a reel, the green sort, for binding little posies to a base. A roll costs very little and lasts for years.
- Twine and sharp snips. Twine for hanging loops and hand-ties, and a small pair of scissors or snips for fine work, kept apart from the ones you use on wire.
- A base, if you are making a wreath or garland. A bought wire ring works, but a ring bent from your own willow or birch prunings is free and looks better. More on that below.
- A kenzan flower frog and a shallow dish, if you want to make a standing arrangement. The frog does the job floral foam used to, without the waste, and lasts a lifetime.
- The flowers. A craft box or your own dried material, plus a bag of petals for the smaller makes.
Which Flowers Hold Up, and Which Shatter
Not everything dries well enough to be handled. Anything you bind, move or brush past needs to hold its shape rather than drop, so it pays to know the keepers from the disappointments before you start. A craft box is already sorted this way, but if you are raiding your own drying line, this is the test.
| Holds its shape (use these) | Shatters or disappoints (leave off) |
|---|---|
| Statice and strawflower | Dahlias and zinnias, too fleshy to dry |
| Achillea (yarrow) plates | Fully open roses, which drop their petals |
| Nigella and poppy seed heads | Anything picked past its best |
| Honesty, grasses, wheat, lavender | Over-dried larkspur and delphinium florets |
| Gypsophila and sea holly | Soft daisies and fully open blooms |
The keepers are the tough, papery and seed-headed things. Statice is as durable as dried flowers get, echinacea cones and poppy seed heads are close to indestructible, and the lacy umbellifer heads and spiky sea holly hold their form for years. Grasses such as wheat, silvery artemisia and honesty moons all hold well too. When in doubt, hold a stem and give it a gentle shake over the table. If it holds, it earns a place. If it rains bits, it does not.
If you are not drying your own, these are the sort of stems to start from, most of them grown and dried here in Norfolk and sold by the bunch:
The One Skill: Little Posies, Roof-Tiled
Learn one thing and most of these crafts open up. The wreath, the garland and the mantel bunch are all the same move, done on different shapes. Here it is.
Make your posies first. Gather small bunches of three to seven stems, each a little mix of a flower, a bit of foliage or grass, and a seed head. Bind each with a twist of florist's wire near the base and snip the stems short and even, a few centimetres long. Build a good pile before you attach anything.
Lay texture before colour. Start with the quiet things, foliage, grasses, seed heads and silvery artemisia or eucalyptus. This is the bed everything else sits on, and it is what stops a make looking like a row of spotty colour.
Overlap like roof tiles. Bind on the first posy, then lay the next so its heads cover and hide the bound stems of the one before, like tiles lapping down a roof, every posy facing the same way. Bind each with the same continuous wire, without cutting it.
Keep the direction and the width even, working all the way along or round, so the finished thing has a clear flow rather than a muddle. That is the whole method, and it is oddly soothing once the rhythm comes.
A Wreath on the Door
The wreath is the classic make, and the roof-tile method above is most of it. The only extra is the base. A bought wire ring is fine, but autumn is the moment to bend your own, because willow and birch prunings are long, whippy and still supple. Cut several pencil-thick lengths about a metre long, bend the thickest into a circle 25 to 30cm across for a door, overlap and tie the ends, then weave the rest around it until you have a ring about the thickness of your thumb. Tie it in two or three places and leave it overnight to dry hard. It will last for years, and bare, with just a few stems tucked in, it is a lovely simple thing in its own right.
Then work your posies round it, roof-tiled, each one covering the last one's stems, all pointing the same way. Close the circle by tucking the final posy's stems under the heads of the first, tie off on the back, and add a wire loop to hang it by. One thing surprises everyone: a 30cm ring swallows far more material than you would ever guess, something like 15 to 20 small posies, so gather more than you think before you begin. You only cover the front and outer edge; the back sits flat against the door and stays bare.
Worth Knowing
A full wreath of that size carries roughly 150 to 300 grams of dried material once you allow for the bits that shatter along the way. Reckon on two or three shop bunches, or a craft box with an armful of your own, rather than a single handful.
Garlands and Mantel Bunches
If a ring feels too much like Christmas, two variants use the very same posies. A table garland is a wreath unrolled: instead of binding to a ring, bind your posies along a length of twine or a few strands of twisted wire, working in one direction and roof-tiled as before, until you have a rope of flowers to lay down the centre of a table. A mantelpiece bunch is simpler still: build the posies, gather them into one loose, generous hand-tie with the same restraint of colour, tie it off and lay it on the mantel or stand it in a jug. Both bring the dried garden indoors without a single bauble in sight, and both suit the quieter winter comfort we wrote about in Hygge Gardening.
An Arrangement, Held on a Flower Frog
For a standing arrangement rather than something bound flat, the old florist's trick is a kenzan, the heavy little metal disc studded with upright pins that the Japanese art of ikebana is built on. People call them flower frogs. You press the stems down onto the pins and they stand exactly where you put them, at any angle you like, with no water and no foam needed at all. For dried flowers it is close to ideal, because the pins grip brittle, hollow stems that would simply flop and slide in an open vase.
Set the frog in a shallow dish or a low, wide vase. A dab of florist's putty under it keeps a heavier arrangement from shifting, though the weight of the frog alone is usually enough for dried stems.
Place the tall stems first. Work in the ikebana spirit of a few well-chosen stems with space between them rather than a packed mass: three main lines, one tall and upright, one reaching out at an angle, one low and forward, is a classic and very forgiving start.
Fill in low and sparingly. Add a few shorter heads and a seed pod or two around the base of the pins to hide the frog and anchor the design, then stop sooner than you think. Dried arrangements look best with air in them.
A tall spray of wheat for the vertical, a few echinacea cones or geum stems reaching out, and some spiky sea holly low at the base suit this restrained style perfectly, and because nothing is bound or glued you can lift a stem out and move it until it sits right. The kenzan flower frogs come in several sizes, so a small one suits a single posy on a windowsill and a larger one a centrepiece, and either will outlast every arrangement you ever make on it.
Petal Crafts: Confetti and Beyond
The smallest item does the most surprising amount. Our dried flower petals are a natural, biodegradable mix, sold as wedding confetti but far more versatile than that one job suggests. A single 4g bag goes a long way across the little makes:
- Natural confetti. Real petals, so they are soft underfoot, photograph beautifully and are welcome at the many venues that now ban plastic or paper confetti because they will not break down.
- Pressed-petal cards and tags. Glue a few petals to plain card or gift tags under a smear of PVA, or seal them with a strip of clear tape, for cards that look hand-made because they are.
- Candle and wax-melt tops. Press a scatter of petals into the surface of a poured candle or melt while it is still soft, keeping them clear of the wick and the flame path, for a decorative finish.
- Jars, baubles and shaker frames. Fill a clear glass bauble, a lidded jar or a flat glass frame with petals for a simple shelf or window piece that needs no skill at all.
- Potpourri and sachets. Mix petals with a few drops of essential oil for potpourri, or stitch them into little muslin bags for drawers and wardrobes.
- Resin keepsakes. Set petals into clear casting resin for coasters, bookmarks or keepsake discs, a lovely way to keep a few petals from a special bunch.
For a single-flower look, the larkspur confetti is the same idea in one flower: its blue, pink and mauve florets hold their colour especially well and scatter beautifully. Either bag is a small outlay for a craft that stretches a long way.
Two Colours, and the Neutrals
Colour is where home-made dried work most often goes wrong, whatever you are making. The temptation is to use one of everything in the box, and the result is a jumble. Restraint reads as expensive. Pick two colours at most, plus the neutrals, the straw, silver and green of the foliage and seed heads, and let those neutrals do most of the work. A wreath, a garland or an arrangement that is mostly texture with two notes of colour running through it looks far better than a rainbow, and it is the whole secret of the barn-dried look.
Keeping It Looking Good
Where dried work lives decides how long it lasts. Dried flowers hate two things above all, direct sun and damp. Strong light bleaches the colour out within a season, so keep a wreath off a bright south-facing door and an arrangement out of a sunny window. A north or east spot, or a sheltered porch, keeps colour far longer.
Damp is the worse of the two: a piece that is rained on, or never dries out between showers, goes limp and spots with mould. For a door wreath a covered porch is ideal; if your door is exposed, think of it as a few good weeks rather than a fixture, and bring it under cover in the wettest spells. Indoors, a gentle puff from a hairdryer on its coolest setting, or a soft paintbrush, lifts dust without snapping anything. Handled kindly, a dried make lasts a year or two, and a wreath can be refreshed each autumn: snip out the posies that have faded, keep the ones that held, and wire in fresh ones from this year's drying on the same home-made base.
The Best Material Starts in Next Year's Bed
A craft box is the quick way to start, but the most satisfying dried flowers of all are the ones you grew, and the time to plan that is now, over winter, so you can sow an everlasting bed in spring. A row or two of statice, strawflower, achillea and gypsophila, with honesty and quaking grass for their seed heads, will keep you in craft material for years, cut and hung through the summer for pennies a stem.
To Do This Week
Start smaller than the everlasting bed. Order a craft box, or raid the drying line, and give one make a go on the first wet afternoon: a small posy on a flower frog is the five-minute version. The first thing you make is never perfect. It will still be the nicest thing on the shelf.
Dried Flower Crafts: Common Questions
What can I make with a dried flower craft box?
Plenty from one box: a door wreath, a table garland, a mantel bunch, a standing arrangement on a flower frog, and smaller petal crafts such as confetti, pressed-petal cards and potpourri. The box is short heads and stems chosen for exactly this close work.
Do I need floral foam or a glue gun?
No. Wreaths and garlands are bound on with fine florist's wire, and a standing arrangement sits on a kenzan flower frog, whose pins hold the stems with no foam and no water. A craft box, wire, twine and snips are the core kit.
How do I use a flower frog with dried flowers?
Set the kenzan in a shallow dish, press the stems down onto its pins, and place a few well-spaced stems rather than a packed mass. The pins grip brittle dried stems that would slide in an open vase, and nothing is glued, so you can move each stem until it sits right.
Are dried flower petals real, and are they biodegradable?
Yes. They are real flower petals, dried, so they are soft, natural and fully biodegradable, which is why they are welcome as confetti at venues that ban plastic or paper. Beyond confetti they suit cards, candle tops, jars, potpourri and resin keepsakes.
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