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A day to celebrate the people who are special in our lives, and treat them with extra care. Flowers are one way to show your loved ones how much you care. And while they’re beautiful on their own, what do you do with them after the party? If you don’t want to throw them away, here’s some ways to reuse the flowers:

Ideas for Using your Flowers After the Party

You can never have too many flowers in one place. Pick a nice vase to keep the flowers for the next couple of days. A clean vase will do, and a flower shaped holder will look so pretty with all those valentine roses. Go ahead and get a nice arrangement and pack it away as soon as the party is over. I also suggest wrapping the flowers in tissue paper or chiffon. Save your flowers as long as possible and keep them in a good, light, airy place.

How to Preserve Them

Cut flowers will eventually wilt and die, but there are ways to keep them fresh for longer. Be sure to change the water in your vase every couple of days, and spritz the petals with water to prolong freshness.

If it was a particularly memorable Valentine’s Day and you want to keep the flowers forever, consider ways of permanently preserving them, such as dipping them in wax, or even gold. Wax-dipping flowers is a bit of a delicate process, but it’s a fun DIY craft, so be sure to try it out first on some other flowers or cuttings.

To preserve flowers in wax, you need:

• A slow cooker or 1/2 quart cooking pot
• Paraffin wax (caution, paraffin wax is extremely flammable)

You need to slowly melt the wax on the lowest heat, and do not walk away from the stove – you want the wax to be around 130-140F, as this is the perfect temperature for the wax to adhere to the flowers. Any lower and the wax won’t properly coat the petals, and any higher will burn and shrivel them.

Making Flower Art

Reusing your flowers for arts and crafts projects is a great way to get some extra value out of that $50 bouquet. For example, you could reuse the ribbon to make a garland, or use the extra flower stems to make a paperweight.

A dried flower head can make a beautiful painting canvas. You could even candy your flower petals for use in baking, such as making a beautiful birthday cake toppers for your significant other’s vintage birthday party. You can also put the petals inside your book to dry out and make them your DIY bookmark. They don’t take that long to dry out and are quite beautiful.

Gardening and Composting

You don’t have to be an expert to grow your own flowers. With just a little bit of patience and effort, you can grow your own potted flowers, and use the old ones as compost. If you’re afraid of getting your clothes dirty, check out some of these simple, comfortable outfits for doing housework. It’s a great way to learn gardening and you can experiment by choosing your own plant. You can grow flowers of different colors, shapes, and sizes. You can even use a lot of those dried flowers to make your eco-friendly home gym a bit more vibrant.

There are some ways to keep the root of the plant, the so-called root ball intact so that they can continue to give off the flower scent. That way, they can last longer. You can even try making a DIY flower pot that will stay clean and have beautiful flowers that are looking better and better.