Melissa Richardson and Amy Fielding of JamJar Edit offer a warm welcome to their course, and discuss their love of flower pressing. They talk through the skills you will learn, and the projects you’ll do together.

Get to know your instructors a little better, as both Melissa and Amy reflect on their creative careers to date and speak about the paths they both took into flower pressing.

Learn about how the magical ability of flower pressing to preserve the beauty of the natural world has been used in a variety of ways for centuries. Melissa and Amy also explain the rules surrounding the picking of wild flowers.

When beginning your journey into flower pressing, there are certain characteristics in flowers that Melissa and Amy would recommend looking out for. They also provide information on where to source flowers for pressing.

You only need a few basic tools to begin flower pressing, and they are all easy to source - you may have most of the equipment already around your home.

The key to getting the best results lies in choosing the right flower - some species are more ideal than others. In this lesson, you’ll find out specific flowers that work well and how to prepare them for the press.

In order to keep your pressed flowers looking their best, it’s incredibly important to learn how to adequately store them. A proper organisational system will also ensure you can find what you’re looking for when it comes to creating a decorative piece.

There is no escaping the fact that the colour of pressed flowers will eventually fade if they are displayed, however in this lesson, you’ll learn about what you can do to delay the process. Melissa and Amy also use case studies of their own work to show the impact of light on pressing.

For this practical section of the course, you’ll be getting to grips with the core skills you will need to master the craft of pressing flowers. In this lesson, Melissa and Amy introduce you to the basics to get you started.

Next, you will build on the basic skills you have learnt by tackling something a little more complex - pressing a tulip.

Ranunculus are beautiful flowers, but notoriously difficult to press. Luckily Melissa and Amy have found that butterfly ranunculus, a variety of this gorgeous species, are easier to press and preserve. They reveal their tips and tricks in this lesson.

Now for the exciting part; opening up your press and seeing how the flowers look now that they are fully dry.

There are many variables in flower pressing, and different species will press at different speeds, so it’s important to learn how to carefully check your specimens during the pressing process.

Another more complicated flower, and a chance to expand your knowledge and skills even further.

Learn more about the inspiration behind JamJar Edit’s artwork compositions, and discover the stories behind the flower pressers of the 16th century.

We are now at the point in the course where you are ready to tackle some pressed flower projects. There are many different ways you can use your pressings to create something decorative for your home - one option is to turn a single stem into a pressed flower artwork.

In this lesson, Melissa and Amy demonstrate how to approach a larger scale artwork with a more complicated specimen; piecing together a pressing of a Hellebore for a show stopping piece.

Taking things to an even bigger scale, you will now be shown how to make a ‘meadow’ inspired artwork using a variety of different stems. It’s also a chance to develop your composition skills.

Follow along as Melissa and Amy continue to play around with composition and see how they approach layering using multiple stems.

With the composition finalised, it’s now time to begin glueing everything down - a process best approached systematically.

For your final project of the course, you’ll combine all your newly learnt skills and techniques to create a lampshade adorned with pressed flowers.

The process of securing your design to the lampshade is a little trickier due to the curved surface, but very achievable with a little patience and some tips from Amy.

Melissa and Amy offer some final words of encouragement and inspiration to take with you on your own flower pressing journey.