Start by browsing your local craft, novelty, or fabric store. You can find many types of dried leaves and blossoms that can be used for their beauteous appearance or appealing scent. Check out the many kinds that are available for various crafts and projects. Then, if you are not quite sure how to use them, invest in a dried flower book that shows you how to assemble pieces that utilize these remnants of seasons past. You might even want to take a class on working with dried plants and floral arrangements, which will add to your repertoire of information and give you plenty of ideas to work with.

If you don’t want to buy the kind of dried flowers that are ready for use, you can get the equipment to make your own dried floral products. There are kits on the market that show you how to collect and dry blossoms, leaves, roots, and herbs to preserve them indefinitely. Instead of tucking them into a book and perhaps forgetting about them or misplacing the book, you can use the correct utensils to do the job right and help flowers last longer.

The next step might be to grow your own plants that are raised for this special purpose. Some plants, like roses and lilies, are easier to preserve than others or last longer, so these are the ones you will want to cultivate. Grow an indoor mini-garden or prepare an outdoor flowerbed, and have fun watching your plants bloom before harvesting their beauty and fragrance for long lasting craft projects. Learn how to keep insects away without using pesticide, and discourage blight naturally without the use of herbicides, which will keep your plants-and you-healthier, especially when the blossoms are dried and used in a living area.

Some of the ways you can use dried floral products include making the ever-popular potpourri. After drying petals, stems, or leaves, crush them and store in small bags for future use. These can become sachets for drawers, room fresheners when heated in water, or attractive decorations when placed in glass bowls or dishes that adorn tabletops or other attractive settings in your home or place of business. Make sure that you know which plants to grow, how to blend them for the right scent, and the proper way to store and use them. Then make good use of these attractive items, or give them away as presents to others.

Dried flower wreaths can be especially beautiful and add that little bit of elegance to the interior of your home, or can be used as a door wreath, as you prefer. Personally You like to make them and hang them on a mirror of a buffet cabinet in the dining room or on a round wall mirror in the living room. You call these “grandmother’s” wreaths, because you choose to make them in the old fashioned way in which my grandmother made them.

You will want to gather a bag full of “trimming” material, vines etc with leaves on them as well as fall flowers and lay them out to dry in a cool yet dry area, such as a garage. When your wreath making materials are completely dry, then you will be ready for the next step, the actual making of the wreath. You will want to cover your work area with newspapers to avoid messy cleanups as much as possible. You may prefer to buy a wreath base or perhaps to try it both ways to see which way you like best. You will need your wire snips and you also might want to wear gloves for this, sometimes the vines will have unsuspected “prickers” on them and getting one of those in a finger doesn’t exactly add to the pleasure of wreath making.

Cut your foliage pieces, vines etc, into six inch lengths, take several of them and put them together, what ever amount looks right to you, like to use three, then add some dried flowers to this mixture, this is called making a bundle. Wire your bundle to the top part of the hanger, next to the hook. Make another bundle and do the same thing, overlapping the first bundle so that the stems are covered. Do this around the circle of your wreath base until it is covered. The stems on the last bundle should be tucked up under the first bundle and wired in place.

If you used a store bought wreath base, make a circle with the wire to hang the wreath by, then wrap and cut the wire, tucking the end in securely to avoid later injuries. If you used a coat hanger, the hook part is already there to use as a hanger so you just need to cut the wire and secure it. You may want to take this outside and lightly spray it with some sort of preservative, to hold it all in place. Some folks use extra firm hair spray for this purpose. Now give yourself a pat on the back, you have worked hard and you have made a beautiful decoration for your home.