Drying Big and Small Orchids

February 21, 2015:

I was able to come across some big purple orchids and thought that they would make an interesting addition to my collection as they are larger compared to all my other flowers.

I first did the usual beginning process of cutting the stem and leaving about an an inch or less of the stem in order to stick a toothpick through it. As mentioned in my other posts doing this process will help in drying the resin as the toothpick could be held up by putting it on a styrofoam bar.

I then filled my container with about an inch of silica gel, so that when I put the flowers on the gel, it would be dried from the bottom and top of the flower.

 Once I had the bed of silica gel, I placed all three flowers on top of the gel and covered all three of them in silica gel.I placed the flowers faced down as I realized that this was the best way to dry the flowers. I was able to make this conclusion as in my past experiments the flowers would dry crumpled or in a wilted position. Based on that observation I thought that if I dried the flowers face down, the petals would be dried in an open position rather than a crumpled or closed one. I will be leaving the flowers in the gel for about a week or even 10 days, in consideration to the flowers large size.

 Since I still had some spare silica gel, I decided to dry two more orchids. I used the white and purple orchid found in the pictures above. I then did the process of cutting the stem in order to stick a toothpick through the bottom of the flower.

  I then poured in about an inch-deep bed of silica gel in the container and placed the flowers faced down as well. I am hoping that by putting all the flowers in the silica faced down will help me get flowers that dry in a open position for a better aesthetic appeal. I covered both flowers in silica gel and plan to leave it sealed in the container for about a week as well. Though I might open the container after 5 days as my past experiments show that the white orchid dries faster than the purple orchid. I have also found in my experiments that the purple Orchid takes about 10 days to dry, so I plan to leave it in the silica gel until about 10 days have passed.