Care and Tips for Arts & Crafts

Tips for paper and pearl flowers, prints, paintings and dried flowers.

Tips & Care for Paper and Pearl Flowers

The stem is made of bendable wire. You can bend and adjust the stem to fit your vase or your liking. If the vase is short, you can bend the bottom part of the flower’s stem, so the flower height is less.
If you have trouble arranging the flowers. You can fill the vase with either, salt, rice, sands, small pebbles or something similar. It will make the flowers stay where you put them!
Choosing the right vase for your flower, or your bouquet. In general, it will be easier to arrange the flower(s) in a vase with a narrow/thin neck, since it will keep the flower just where you put it. However, depending on the flowers, vases with a thick neck/large hole can make a bouquet flare out beautifully.
Avoid direct sunlight, very sunny or reflective environments – as with paintings and prints, UV light can cause colors on crepe paper (and in some cases, pearls) to fade.
Example
Bend the metal strand to adjust the height of your vase.

- With a blow og breath — gently blow the petals once in a while, or use an empty spray bottle (without water!) to blow away dust.
- With a soft brush — gently brush flower leaves and petals with a clean toothbrush, paint brush or another small, soft brush.

If a flower has been bent, squeezed or flattened a bit due to storage or something else, you can in many cases mend and straighten it out again.
Both pearl and paper flowers are more durable than many tend to think. Pearl flowers, because their entire structure is based on metal strands and wire, which holds them together, and makes it fairly easy and safe to adjust the individual parts on your own. Paper flowers, because crepe paper has a relatively robust and flexible structure, that makes it possible to shape and sometimes reshape.
That said, it is still important to be careful when handling them. Always start by using as little force as possible to get a feel for how the materials work.

Rearranging petals, leaves, stamens and stems — if any part of the the pearl flower has come to a position you would like different, you can always gently rearrange it by bending or twisting the part back into position.
Giving form to petals and leaves — use your thumbs to smoothen the weave of pearls, if the surface has become uneven or crooked.

Rearranging petals — if a petal has come to a position you wish to change, you can do so by gently nudging the petal back in to place, by cupping the petal with your thumbs, or pressing the petal up or down at the root of it, depending if you wish the petal to point higher or lower.
Rearranging stamens — if the stamens around the flower center have come to a position you would like to change, you can gently place a finger on the bottom of the stamens on the inside of the flower and push them back/down.
Example
If a paper flower has been squeezed a little, for example during storage, you can adjust the petals by "cupping" them with your thumbs. This will restore a petal with a rounded shape.

Eksempel
Adjust the stamens by lightly pressing the base of them with the tip of your finger.

Sunlight: Avoid placing paintings and prints in direct sunlight or very sunny environments – sunlight can cause the colors to fade. The same goes for dried flowers.
Organic materials: The dried flowers I use are all natural and consists of organic materials. Therefor it is possible that they change with time. That said, in my experience they hold up really well as long as they are not in very bright or sunny environments.
UV protecting glass frames: Consider framing your prints and paintings in frames with UV protection glass – this helps protect the colors and material from fading.
Acid-free materials: Dried flowers are attached with acid-free glue. Prints and images are mounted in passe-partouts with acid-free tape.
Dried flowers on glass: On artworks where flowers are attached directly to glass, e.g. in small glass frames with a shelf, I have used a clear nail polish. The idea is that the flowers – if one day you would wish to – can be removed, and any residue can be removed with nail polish remover.