DIY Dried Flower Bookmarks

Last fall, I bought a flower press to dry flowers and leaves and I taught my oldest daughter how to use it. We dried a few colored leaves last year and they turned out great!

Fast forward to this year and my daughter went on a flower drying frenzy! She even enlisted her other siblings to help pick and dry flowers. I knew she was drying flowers, but I had no idea how many she had dried, until recently.

She discovered that the flower press could not hold the amount of flowers she wanted to dry and started drying them in books, too. In fact, she had all of our Harry Potter books filled with flowers of all kinds from our garden! It was adorable.

Unfortunately, I did not know this and therefore the flowers were placed into the books without tissue paper or parchment paper to protect the books. There was some staining on the pages. But none of the staining was too damaging. It was a teachable moment and now our books have some added character.

In any case, we looked at all of the flowers she had dried and thought, “now what do we do with all of them?” After brainstorming several ideas, she decided she wanted to try making dried flower bookmarks. And they turned out beautiful!

How Do You Dry Flowers and Leaves?

Drying flowers and leaves is very simple. However, it does require some time. You could buy a fancy flower press or you could dry them the old fashioned way…using books! As I stated above, we used both methods.

After you have carefully chosen your flowers and leaves of choice, you may choose to rinse them and dry them briefly on a paper towel. But it is not necessary.

The flower press comprises of layers of cardboard that you lay the flowers or leaves between. You could just place your flowers and leaves right between the cardboard layers. However, I would recommend placing tissue paper or parchment paper on either side of the flowers or leaves to prevent sticking and the possible ruining of your dried beauties. Once the flowers, leaves and cardboard layers are set in place, you simply put the top on and screw it tightly into place.

The same holds true if you are using the book method. Only in this method, you need only choose your page or pages to add your dried flowers or leaves. It is best to place tissue paper or parchment paper on either side of the flowers or leaves to prevent sticking and to prevent damage to your beautiful books. Once they are set into place, just close the book and put it on a shelf between other books.

Once you have set your flowers and leaves in place, let them sit for 2 to 3 weeks. They should be nicely dried flat and ready to use for crafts by the end of the third week. We have chosen to store ours in plastic Ziploc bags for later use.

What Supplies Will I Need?

We do quite a bit of crafting, so I happened to have all of these supplies at home already. You can certainly find most of these supplies at a craft store or Walmart. You could also improvise and be creative with whatever you have! However, you will need to either dry some flowers or leaves or buy them ahead of time.

Pressed dried flowers and leaves of different kinds
Cardstock Paper of different colors
Markers, Letter Stickers or some way of adding letters (Optional)
Ruler
Scissors
Glue
Paint Brush
Hole Punch
1/8” Satin Ribbon

How Do You Make Dried Flower Bookmarks?

After choosing your colored cardstock paper of choice, use your ruler to measure a 2” x 7” stick of paper for each bookmark. Cut this out and decide whether you would like your bookmark to have any wording on it. Add your sentiment in whatever fashion you’d like.

Before adding any dried flowers and leaves, it’s best to plan out your design. We chose our flowers and laid them on our paper, first. Once we liked our design, we used a paint brush to gently paint glue on the back of each flower or leaf. We used our fingers to place the dried flowers and leaves on our bookmarks. However, you may want to consider using tweezers to do this, as the glue can get sticky and messy.

At this point, you could be done! Or, you could choose to preserve your bookmarks for prolonged use and add a creative flare to really dress them up.

How Do You Preserve Your Dried Flower Bookmarks?

After adding the dried flowers to our bookmarks with glue, we let them dry for a few hours. When we were sure the glue was dry, we decided to laminate them to make sure the flowers or bookmarks did not get damaged with use. Because, even though the flowers were glued on, they could still peel off with time or the paper could rip.

One of the best investments I’ve made in craft supplies was a laminator at Walmart! I seem to always find uses for this nifty little thing. Honestly, it may well be one of the best $20 I’ve spent as a crafting parent!

We put four bookmarks in a laminating pouch at a time and ran it through the laminator. It takes about 5 minutes for the laminator to get warmed up and maybe another 1 minute to run each pouch through. The bookmarks are laminated instantly and can be cut to size right away.

We cut the bookmarks out and rounded the edges with a pair of scissors, so that the pointy edges wouldn’t hurt anyone. We then punched a hole in the top of each bookmark and added pretty ribbons.

Once laminated, the bookmarks should stay beautiful indefinitely. They can be used regularly in books without being damaged. However, they can be bent, so you should still use caution when using them.

These dried flower bookmarks make beautiful homemade gifts for birthdays, holidays, or just because! My children and I made so many, we plan to give these to teachers for Christmas this year! Hopefully, this inspires you to make something beautiful of your own, too.