Preserving Petals?

[leopardwolf.livejournal.com]

My box of crafts came back home, and I've been busy getting images together. I hope to share them sometime later tonight.


In the meantime, I wanted to ask about preserving petals. My mate sent me a special order of flowers, which is set to deliver three seperate orders. I was not expecting this, so it was quite a surprise.

I have tulips, and I just recieved what appears to be iris, lily, and daisey.

Since I got the tulips first, they're starting to look a bit wilty. I was planning to go ahead and remove them from the stems and set them somewhere. I know how delicate they can be though, and will shrival almost instantly.

I considered plucking each individual petal from each sprig. I also considered how to preserve them. I'd rather go a natural way like air drying, or pressing them so I can use them again later. For pressing, I was thinking about putting them between something... some sort of paper and then placing them between some heavy stacks of books.

I can't remember for the life of me, if I were to simply hang them somewhere, what are the ideal conditions to get the best dried flowers?

An area with low light, cool, but not too damp? Hard to do here in Louisiana with our humidity.

Would it even work for tulips? They are so delicate, but I want to try anyway.

Anyone else have any experience drying or pressing flowers or herbs for crafty things? Have ny sites to recommend? Any thoughts or suggestions?