Don't Toss The Dead Or Wilting Flowers In Your Vase - Here Are 14 Ways To Repurpose Them

Having fresh flowers in your home is a great way to add liveliness and a pop of color, which is just part of the reason why you should be keeping fresh flowers in your home year-round. Unfortunately, however, they will start to wilt and die eventually. Normally, you could just toss them out and buy a new bouquet. However, if you're trying to repurpose more things around your home or your flowers have significance to you, you may want to find other ways to use the wilting plants. Thankfully, there are plenty of repurposing methods including making candles, wall art, resin decor, and compost.

While some repurposing ideas take a bit of creativity or time, many are also quite simple and easy. No matter your preferences or schedule, one of the choices below for preserving wilting flowers is sure to work for you and still look beautiful. Some even manage to offer both a mix of art and function, like turning them into potpourri.

It's a good idea to take your wilting flowers and immediately dry them out. There are several ways to preserve your important bouquets and put them on display, and the method you choose can determine how you'll reuse them. Therefore, to preserve them properly for a future project, you need to know what you want to do with them first. There are so many ideas throughout the internet, but the 14 below offer you plenty of options to repurpose wilting flowers.  

Making a candle with flower petals is pretty easy. If you want to use the simplest method, all you need to do is buy a candle-making kit and follow the steps, placing flower petals around the edges as you go. However, be warned that these candles should be primarily used for decoration rather than actual lighting. Flower petals may look beautiful when pressed into the wax, but they can actually be pretty dangerous to light. Petals are rather flammable, so putting them in candles can lead to a large fire.

Resin is such a versatile tool. Though it takes some practice, you can make all sorts of items with resin, especially if you have a mold. Create trays, centerpieces, or bookends filled with your flowers. Looking around online, it doesn't take long to find all kinds of resin projects you can create for your home and that you can make stand out with a few dried flowers. Just be sure you practice before using important bouquets, as it's common to make mistakes.

Have you been considering buying new art to add a little more color and texture to your home? Instead of going and investing in a new art piece, use your dried flowers and make one. If you press them, you can artistically place the petals, stems, and leaves in a frame and hang them on your wall for a colorful piece. For dried flowers that aren't pressed, use a shadow box to create hanging art with a more natural and wild look.

A simple option is to reuse your flowers to help your garden grow. If you have a composter or composting pile, toss them in to get the necessary nutrients that will help your plants in the future. It's a good idea to cut the flowers into smaller chunks to speed up the process. However, roses and other thorny plants should be left out of your compost pile or trimmed, as thorns do not decompose as fast as the rest of the plant and will stay sharp.

If you want a simple repurposing project, Joanna Gaines offers one of the best ways to preserve your gorgeous flowers: place them in a jar. It's easy to do and doesn't require a lot of supplies or time. All you have to do is let your flowers dry, cut off the heads, and place them into a sealed jar or container of some sort. You can even decorate them with a label or tag to help you remember the date you got this bouquet and why it's so important to you.

Junk journaling is when you fill a blank page with scraps of art, text, and images. Take dried, pressed flowers and stick them on the page as well for a twist on the practice. If you use the journal to press the flowers, you may get fun colors and dyes to incorporate as well. You can just decorate these pages for a fulfilling task, display them as art around your home, or take the now-decorated journal pages and use them for a daily journal, lists, or anything else.

Potpourri is a simple way to keep your wilting flowers. Try to dry a bunch of different colors, sizes, and textures to make an eye-catching mix. You can also use herbs and things like cinnamon sticks for a more festive or colorful look. To make it smell good, just add a few drops of your favorite essential oil. Refresh the oil as needed, and you have a fun, homemade potpourri mix. This is a simple but often overlooked way to use wilting flowers that's hard to mess up.

By wrapping your presents with a few dried flowers, your gifts will certainly stand out. Take something more muted, like brown wrapping paper, and package your present nicely. Then, on the front, attach some of your prettiest preserved flowers with hot glue or wax. These are perfect to bring to people for holidays and celebrations, but you can also use them in your home if you wrap up old boxes for holiday decorations. Throw on some bows and ribbon to finish the look.

If you want a forest cottage-themed home, leave your drying and dried flowers hanging upside down from your ceiling. This is one method of preserving your flowers, and you can leave them that way for a few months for a cozy cottage or witchy feel. It achieves a similar look to preserving them in boxes or frames but in a more wild and natural way that may appeal to certain homeowners more. You can also use this method with herbs and other plants you have around your home.

Dried flowers make the ultimate bathroom decor because they can add a bit of color and brightness to a space where potted plants may not survive. While you can go and buy some premade bouquets or a mix of dried flowers, this is also a great opportunity to reuse ones you have around the house that may be dying. If you want to make the dried flowers stand out more, grab a couple of extra stems of eucalyptus from a store for some height and depth.

If you have a blanket or pillowcase that you love the feel of but not so much the color, you can try to take your old flowers and make dye. Though a lot of people use fresh flowers for dyeing, dried and pressed petals work just as well, so you can let your plants stay in the vase until you're done with them. Of course, you can't use every flower, but red roses, cosmos, marigolds, chamomile, and black-eyed Susans provide some stunning color options.

If you get flowers regularly and are tired of putting them in the same plain vase, it's time to take your old arrangement and repurpose it. With a little glaze, tweezers, and a paintbrush, you can stick your dried flowers onto any glass. It works for vases but also plates made to hold keys and change, decorative jars, and any other decorations you have lying around. For vases and glasses, try adding a candle inside to turn the piece into a lantern.

Resin can be used to preserve flowers not only for small decorations but also for furniture pieces. You can create a full or partial resin table and place your flowers inside to keep them for many years. Use them inside a dining, side, or outdoor table. There are many options and ways to get creative with this method, so be sure to have some fun with it. This does take some practice and money to do yourself, as flowers can change color or react strangely when left in resin for a long time.

Not everyone feels creative. If you want to repurpose the flowers somehow but don't think you can do it yourself, there are plenty of companies online that will take your flowers and turn them into art for you. Or, you can donate them to a program that sends them to people who need extra love in their homes. This is also a great way to repurpose flowers if you're someone who follows feng shui, as Vastu Shastra says that dried and artificial flowers should be kept out of homes.