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Dried Roses Tinted with Food Coloring
by Stephie McCarthy
These rosy dried roses started out as a basket of faded, drab blossoms.
Dyed with gel food coloring they make a vivid display
and won't fade. We can decorate with these for years.
Here's what we found worked best:
Gel food coloring and a bit of liquid wax
rubbed on with a cotton swab.
To duplicate this craft, you'll need:
• Gel food coloring in neon pink, green, and yellow
(other colors will work as well)
• Waverly Inspirations Clear Wax
(this is easy to find and used for sealing chalk paint projects)
• Cotton Swabs
• Water
Here is a food coloring kit in neon colors —
The clear wax by Waverly is available at Walmart.
We also had baby wipes, a spray bottle, paint brushes,
gloves, a drop cloth, and a vase to hold the roses for drying.
I'll show you what I discovered, but first …
… here's a close up of dried roses before tinting …
And before that …
… hanging to dry, fading a lot, and ending up
with a texture like crushed parchment paper.
When I first conceived of using food coloring to dye the dried roses,
I tried it on various plants and realized that dried petals had
natural water-resistant surfaces. The water-based colors
beaded and looked unnatural.
When I mixed the gel food coloring with liquid wax, the
color blended smoothly. I switched to a cotton swab
and the results were even better.
Eureka!
but oops … sometimes I used too much wax stain
and had to remove a lot with baby wipes.
AND … if, after drying, there was just too much wax on
the rose and it looked like melted crayon, I found I could
dip it in a small cup of warm water (almost hot), and a lot
of the wax stain would come right off! That was good!
I dabbed food coloring on those roses again, this time without
adding wax. I learned that the stain, although it
tended to bead at first, would slowly spread through the
petals as the roses dried.
I tried dipping roses in water first then brushing
on the food coloring. The color beaded, but as the rose
dried it seemed to blend in, especially with a little extra brush work.
So, wax is not entirely necessary.
But I loved the blending ability of the wax!
For these faded pink buds, I used the wax and gel formula and
a paint brush and boosted their color with pink, yellow, and
orange. Colorful and durable!
I loved adding the waxy green stain near the stems, and even boosting
some of the leaf colors with green wax too.
A touch of green looked very natural.
Wipe it off until there is just a trace.
I soon had a basket of vivid roses to use in decorating.
Starting from this …
Beautiful, but now they will stand out much better …
… and last for for a very long time!
Like true love …
– Shop with Sweet Home Stephie McCarthy –
