Café Caw hosted the one-day crafting workshop with the theme #makesummerhappier.

Sam Despi on painting illustrations and finding your own art style.

Neil won the flowercrown-making contest and won a cactus!

I am often asked as to why I press flowers and to be dead honest with you, there is no sentimental value behind each flower. I simply do it for the aesthetic and it's a great way to preserve flowers. I would normally have flowers in a vase and once I see it withering, I then take out my flower-pressing tools. Because it is the first day of spring time, I decided to do a step-by-step blog post on how you can personalize flowers!


To begin with, choose a nice sheet of paper. You can also use card stock if you plan on framing these or hanging them up for display. Today, I picked up some red roses from a vase. Roses and bulky flowers (Carnations, for example) are more difficult to work with as the petals tend to fall off much easily, but they always end up looking the prettiest. Easier flowers to work with are daisies. After choosing your base and flowers, lay your flowers the way you want it to look. Remember that these would end up flat, so leave a bit of distance for each flower.


Tape down your flowers to place. I highly suggest using washi tape just because the adhesive isn't strong enough to ruin the paper. I also use a #00 paintbrush and dip into some craft glue. I then paint the back of my flower's stem with the glue and pressed it down with my fingers a few times.


As for the last and final step, insert your paper inside a hardbound book and place it in between more books. I prefer to leave my flowers for 48 hours and then remove the tape afterwards. And viola!

this is my final product.