
Rita Ford
Pressed Plant Art "Hawaiian sunset"
Updated: Jan 14, 2020

To create this art I need:
petals of roses’ in six colors, petals of gladiolus, a petal of pansy;
wrappers from the stalk of Elephant garlic.

In the beginning, I’m drawing the sketch of the future picture.
After this, I'm doing two copies of the sketch on the copy machine. I’m taking one copy and tracing lines of the figures of the dancer and the sun on the backside, using glass. I gluing gladiolus’s petals for body and pansy petal for the sun on the front surface of the copy. The same I’m repeating with the figure of the dancer’s right arm, using another copy of the sketch. I’m using also gladiolus's’ petals for it.
I let them dry inside of newspaper sheets under a press.

Then I’m cutting out the figure of the Hawaiian dancer (Hula girl) and the figure of the sun, using lines on the backside. I’ m gluing figures of the dancer's body and her right arm together. The figure of the arm is underneath of the figure of the body, so it has a margin in the place where they are connected.

Now I’m putting and tracing outlines of the dancer and marking the spot for the sun with a pencil on the picture.

After this I’m starting to glue roses’ petals of six colors to make a sunset, leaving the space for the dancer’s figure empty. Then the picture has to dry inside of the sheets of newspaper under a press to make sure it will be flat and tidy.

Now I need to mark the horizon attaching a piece of paper as straight edge. First I’m gluing white and shiny wrappers from the stem of elephant garlic along the edge. Second I’m adding more garlic skin to imitate the reflection of the sun on the surface of the ocean. After this is done I can remove the paper.

I’m gluing the figure of the sun, using a marked spot.

Next, I’m gluing the figure of the dancer on the place marked with a pencil.
My picture should be absolutely dried then I’ m scratching lines around the sun with a knife to get stripes white color of the board. I’m cleaning the picture from scratched petals’ stuff. When this work is done it should look like rays of the sun.
Before putting the picture into the frame it has to be dried.
To protect Pressed Plant Art from moisture, oxygen and UV lite I vacuum seal it.
Vacuum-sealed Pressed Plant Arts are HERE
Pressed Plant Arts are HERE
Real butterflies in shadow boxes are HERE
Resin pieces of jewelry are HERE