Smashing Flowers........no, really!

It all started when I was looking through some "how to's" on the internet and randomly came across one on smashing flowers. I decided to try this myself. Since most of my flowers are yellow in the weeds here , I headed to Home Depot and picked up $5 worth of those bedding plants people replace every year (annuals). I then came home and grabbed some thick paper (watercolor paper), a hammer, and picked some of the flowers. I cleared out a spot in the garage and sat down...........

I placed a scrap piece of paper down, then one sheet of heavy paper (use two if it is light)
I then arranged some flowers in a pretty pattern, added another sheet of heavy paper, and another sheet of scrap on top of that.

Then I took the hammer and started pounding on the flowers! It took me a *LOT* of taps with the hammer to cover the whole page.

1. The flowers added enough bulk that the papers wouldn't stay on top of each other and kept sliding around. I solved this by gently setting a piece of plywood on the paper stack and doing a pre squish. I guess that's why one suggestion was to tape the whole pile to the work surface! I was lazy and didn't want to go find tape.

2. Some flowers are very juicy! Seems the thicker the flower, espically those with big middles, the juicier and messier they are. My first pounding ended up a wet gooey mess. I ended up having to take the middles out of any daisy like flowers, take off the stems of the succulent type flowers, and place the flowers further apart on the paper to start. I also learned reallllllly quicky to tap gently, not smash the flowers (contrary to the craft name!) unless you wanted to be wiping flower juice off of everything. (see section)

3. Tapping a piece of paper 100's of times with a hammer triggers wrist pain.....I think next time I'll use a sledgehammer (bigger surface area to tap with).

4. Some yellow flowers tapped into brown mushy messes. I ended up doing a test page of one or two petals of each flower type to see the results and discarding flowers from plants that didn't smash well. (see section)

5. You have to make sure the surface underneath your paper can handle being smacked by a hammer... my garage floor was starting to show some wear, so if you value the area you might want to find another place. I highly recommend not trying this on your new hardwood floors!

You can see my favorite results in the picture at the top of this lens. Some of the flower combinations came out quite nice! They because even more interesting when scanned in and the contrast increased.

WARNING: Make sure the smashings are DRY before putting on the scanner bed. Gently brush off the loose pieces or it takes *forever* to get them off the scanning glass...........trust me........

I did notice a bit of fading, and I imagine over time the paper smashings would change color due to oxygen exposure. I immediatly scanned/photographed mine to preserve the colors. I'm thinking that self adhesive laminating might be a good protector. After the smashings
have dried completely so there are no gooshy flower pieces hanging on, you might be able to run them through a hot heat type laminator. I have not tried this yet so flower smashers beware! The heat may alter the colors (definetly will if you don't let them dry).

As requested, I'll now go through step by step and show you what smashing flowers looks like. First, grab your hammer and paper. Here I'm using a "normal" claw hammer and 24lb white printer paper. It was getting dark, so please forgive the blue tints.

Try to pick out flowers that aren't "juicy".......thin flowers work best, the brighter the color the better, and as you'll see, remove any thick parts or green bulby parts.......
Here is a bougie, one of my favorite so far to use due to the bright colors and lack of splatter!

You'll have to forgive me, I don't know the name of this weed. Turns into puffballs of seeds as it matures. It's very pretty at the ends, but as you'll see, it smashes into a gooey mess!

This is a flower I found out you have to use just the petals because the middle smashed into a brown blob. Grows rampant as a weed, the sap from it can make you itch, even the goats don't like to eat it. But the yellow petals add a nice touch!

These are pretty useful flowers, although a bit juicy (don't whale on them or you'll have a mess!). Forget using the leaves, they are a succulent type plant and just go SPLAT. This is the darker pink one.

The light pink one, does tend to fade out.......remove the ant before smashing (yuck!).

Another no name (I tossed all of the tags I'm afraid), but it smashed purple! The leaves are useful also as they are small and on the drier side so they don't make a mess and smash a nice green

Another nice purple colored smasher! The leaves were too pale and wet to use though.

This is an illustration of how different flowers react to being pounded. First, I placed one of each flower spaced well apart on the page. I pulled the petals apart on the portulaca since the flowers had closed for the night.

Here's the above flowers midway through smashing.....I'm on a rough concrete porch and the texture of the concrete is being imbedded into the flower smashing! In this case it's an unwanted effect, although later I'll use it for a special effect. Oops!

You can also see some of the juicier bits of flower leaking through both top papers......

So the top right and bottom middle flowers just turn into brown piles of mush with a tinge of color...those were the yellow whole flower and the purple weed, respectively. NO good!

The light pink portulaca just washes out (lower left).

The individual yellow petals are nice and yellow, the bougie leaf is a nice magenta, and both other purple flowers are useable!

Lets move on to a real design!

For the next tries, I pulled out a piece of scrap cardboard to place under the papers (it was either that or move the whole production back into the garage and I was admittedly being lazy......) to avoid the textured look.

For this one, I actually arrange the pieces of good flowers into a design. Unless you are reallllllllly careful your design elements will move a bit, if you *must* have accuracy I imagine a tiny dab of white school glue would help out. You can presquish using a piece of plywood if the flowers are so thick the paper won't hold down.

Here I've also added a ficus leaf just to see what would happen. There's no green stems on the flowers, and I've pulled the petals off the otherwise mushy yellow plant.

Ok, I'm a bit impatient and had to check the progress of the flowers. You should ideally pound the whole piece of paper......but I tried to be sneaky and pound only where I "knew" flowers were. Of course, some of them had moved on me........... I also realized the ficus leaf wasn't doing so well so after taking this I switched it out for a piece of the small lilac flower's foliage. As you can see, I missed several flowers and they all needed more squashing.

Here's the sprig of the purple plant in the ficus leaf's place.......

Here's the results of the final poundings before being set aside to dry. Most of the flowers were pounded well, although I could've done more in some areas. Notice the lack of texture , the cardboard did its job! Most of the elements of the design stayed put....so I'm happy with this one. I then placed it inside to dry. I learned the hard way that my cat loved licking the flower pieces off , wetting the design and smearing it in the process, so I had to place them out of his reach. Notice you get *two* smashings for the price of one by using paper on top and bottom! I recently read about using paper towels as the top layer to avoid the gooey mess......but I think I'll stick with drier flowers and getting two flower smashings.

Here's the scanned in version, on a greeting card and cropped to an interesting point:

Close up of smashed flowers purple green red by SusansZooCrew

I decided to try and use the accidental texture of the concrete in an artistic way, so I picked more small purple flowers and arranged them in a circle.....

I pounded a little too hard, you can see how deep the texture is.....it took me being careful to be able to peel the paper off the concrete without it ripping! You can also see how the flowers' juice comes through both layers......if using heavy paper it doesn't matter, but using thin like I did here you'll definetly need two sheets or it'll get too damp and rip.

The picture makes it a bit hard to see, but this did have the intended effect of a ring of purple smashings with texture behind. Could be really useful in papercrafting!

Here's how the lilac circle comes out after scanning it in on an Epson v500 scanner, I really like the effect the "oops" indentations gives in this case!


Lilac colored smashed flower design with divots by SusansZooCrew

So, flower hammer and you have art1I hope this lens has inspired you to grab a hammer and try this for yourself! I didn't get the fancy versions I've seen online, but I still enjoy the results. Experiment with different papers, flowers, hammers, floors and see what you get! At the very least it'll keep the kids busy, and you can turn it into a lesson on flower types too!

Smashing flowers can lead to some pretty floral designs! Great for business cards, greeting cards, and backgrounds!