By Josette Keelor — Daily Staff Writer

Whether used in decorating or to make potpourri, dried flowers can provide beauty throughout the home, both visually and sensually.

Carrie Lovett, of Clarke County, makes decorative items with dried flowers for her business, Carrie's Creations, but she also dries flowers just for fun.

"I do it for myself," she says of arranging dried flowers in vases, "but for my business, I do cards and picture frames."

Lovett has been drying and using flowers and herbs on and off for more than 20 years, but she only recently started the business. Though she admits she was never really interested in gardening, she began visiting local state arboretums for inspiration in combining flowers, both for their color and their scent. She advises those interested in working with flowers to visit an arboretum and just run their fingers through the herbs and other fragrant plants, so they can learn which plants they enjoy and which they do not.

"It's simple education," she says.

"I also pick my own flowers and do whatever appeals to me," she says. Another practice that interests her is making potpourri.

"I do that for myself, too," she says, adding she intends to incorporate it into her business in the near future.

Some of what she does she learned from Carl Siebentritt, of Loudoun County, who also dries flowers to make cards and decorate lamp shades and vases. Siebentritt, 86, began his hobby about eight years ago, when his wife developed Alzheimer's disease. His daughter had become interested in working with dried flowers, and Siebentritt said he thought the work would help occupy his wife's mind.

"This thing has been a great help all through that," he says.

Before her death in January, he and his wife would walk outside together and collect flowers.

"This is also a way of keeping sane," he says. "To me it's real therapy, through these days. I'm having fun."

Lovett and Siebentritt say that drying flowers is easy but a lot depends on the plants chosen.

"I think one thing that people maybe lose sight of is that the drying of the flowers needs to be done at their peak," says Billie Clifton, owner of the Sunflower Cottage on Reliance Road in Warren County.

"Lavender is great, all the herbs are great, catnip, anise hyssop," she says. "Roses are excellent dried." Clifton also recommends sweet Annie because of the fragrance.

"When you bring it in and dry it, it just fills your house with fragrance," she says. "Bells of Ireland is a good one. Sunflowers dry well, eucalyptus, there's so many." Some others she suggests using are strawflower, yarrow, hydrangeas and baby's breath.

"Sometimes people dry grasses. They're very decorative and ornamental," she says. "And you can experiment with something you like and see."

"I like the fern combinations," Lovett says. "In some ways it's even more fun to pick the stuff."

Siebentritt says that he finds some of his best flowers on the side of the road.

"I always try new things ... different ways of combining flowers," he says. "Queen Anne's Lace, to me, is the easiest to work with ... and people like it."

There are no specific rules for using dried flowers, though Clifton says to plan for flowers to have more muted colors once they are dried.

"The colors are going to fade just a little bit in the drying process," she says.

Clifton offers workshops at Sunflower Cottage throughout the year on dried flowers and herbs, inviting guest speakers to teach other skills. Workshops are listed at the store's Web site, www.sunflowercottage.net.

For potpourri, she recommends drying flowers in a cool, dry and dark spot in the house, or an attic or storage shed. Hang the plants upside down or lay them flat in a place that has air circulation, she says, so that the plants will not develop mold as they're drying.

"I would think air conditioning is just fine," says Lovett who hangs flowers and herbs upside down from the fire place mantel in her bedroom. In the work room downstairs, a dehumidifier protects the flowers she is pressing.

Both she and Siebentritt dry flowers and herbs among the pages of phone books, because the books are disposable and also because of the quality of the paper.

"It works, that's the main thing," Lovett says.

"You need weight," Siebentritt says, to press the flowers, explaining that he weighs down the phone books with large rocks. He used to use a mechanical press, but he says it was tedious work, so he settled on the phone book method.

Siebentritt makes greeting cards, which he then gives away to family and friends or for charity through his church. Though the cards turn out looking like a work of art, the process of making them is far from painstaking. Lovett uses a similar process for her cards, too.

After drying the plants, which take different amounts of time, depending on how much water is in a flower, Siebentritt takes them outside to the gazebo overlooking his 29 acres between Luckett and Waterford. Because of the chemicals he uses for the projects, he prefers to work outdoors.

He uses Krylon, a spray adhesive, on the back of each flower and then uses tweezers to place the flower onto the surface he is decorating. For greeting cards, he adds the flower either directly to a blank card, which his daughter brings him from craft stores, or onto handmade craft paper such as Mulberry Paper or Thai Banana Paper, which Siebentritt says is made from plant materials. Gluing the flowers to the handmade paper serves two purposes, he says.

It adds interest to the greeting card, he says, and if you don't like the composition, you don't waste a card, which is more expensive than the handmade paper. Once the flower is where he wants it on the paper, he uses wax paper to push the flower onto the paper to make sure it sticks. Then he applies spray adhesive to the back of the handmade paper and glues it onto the front of the card.

Lovett alternates between using spray adhesive or regular craft glue, depending on the effect she wants. With glue, she says she has more control, because she can move a flower to a new spot without ruining the paper. With spray adhesive, she has only one chance to get it right.

"It's easy, it's fast, it sticks, but it gets everywhere," she says of the adhesive. "But it has a nice look to it. It's a lot easier to use in a lot of ways."

"This is all trial and error," Siebentritt says. After he has the flowers in place on the card, he sprays the image with a clear acrylic matte sealer.

"The matte finish protects the flowers," Lovett says. "It gives it a little bit of a shine, but it's matte, not glossy."

Siebentritt says he doesn't worry about making the cards perfect. "No two are the same, just whatever turns me on at the moment," he says. Also, flowers of the same plant will turn out differently once they are pressed.

"Some will take on their old shape," he says. "They come out rather interesting, and I like that."

Some of them change color as they dry and that can be a problem, so Siebentritt says he experiments with silicon or canola oil, spraying the flowers to see if that will help them to keep their color after drying.

"I'm an old experimental physicist," he says, having retired from a career as a nuclear physicist.

"I just don't get too fussy. You don't worry about getting every blossom perfect, or else you go crazy."

Lovett has recently begun drying flowers in a bin of silica sand, hoping that this will help them to keep their shape.

"This dries them right out; it sucks out the moisture," she says. "If they're not pressed, then they're intact flowers," she says, which will work well for making potpourri.

Lovett says she enjoys potpourri because of the scent.

"It is the flower [that decides] the scent of it," she says, indicating some dried lavender that she has had in her home for years and still has a strong scent. "This stuff will last forever."

*Contact Josette Keelor at jkeelor@nvdaily.com