Dehydrated Roses

I have so many beautiful roses and every morning I go out and walk around the gardens. One special bush only has a few roses at a time but they look like long stemmed roses and smell like raspberries. I decided to pick them for the table but once I brought them inside I realized they wouldn’t last long so I was going to air dry them like I usually do. Then I had an idea! My oven has a dehydrator setting so I decided to try my hand on making dehydrated roses.

Normally when I dry roses, I tie a few together and hang them upside down on a cabinet handle. They usually take a few days up to a week to fully dry. The petals tighten up a bit but still look beautiful. These were my birthday roses from Alex and Lia.

Theses special raspberry roses are so beautiful and I love watching as each little bud opens into a gorgeous bloom. Usually the one that blooms first is on it’s way out by the time the others bloom but this year they were all in full bloom at once.

The dehydrator setting on my oven was new to me, I’ve only used it once to dry apples and I’ve had the oven for 3 years! First thing I did was cut the stems short.

Not sure why the first picture came out so red, they are more of a deeper red like the top photos. I put the roses on parchment paper and set the dehydrator at 225 degrees for an hour. After checking I added another hour on. Two hours was perfect and my roses were dried! Now to decide where to put them.

Well most of you know I save so much stuff for “I might need this sometime” and I decided to search through my stash for some type of container. I found the perfect sized vase but I needed a cover to keep the dust out. So I dug around some more and found an iridescent Christmas ornament that was the perfect size for a cover!

Next it was time to put the roses in the vase but I needed to add some height to the bottom to bring the roses closer to the top. Time to dig through Lia’s craft items. I found a few small packages of colored sand and some clear glass decorative stones. After adding both to the vase and lightly shaking them together I was ready to add the roses. So far so good but it was missing something. Back to the craft items! I found a string of tiny white beads and a yellow butterfly that finished off my creation. I also found a tiny reddish/purple cross that you may see it sitting on the sand in the center photo.

The yellow paper butterfly is similar to the real one that was fluttering around Lia’s garden last summer as I was organizing it. This butterfly landed on an Angel then flew onto a rose bush then my hand. I know it was a visit from Rich and he stayed with me for over an hour.

This was my first attempt at making dehydrated roses and arranging them in a vase. Now I’m ready to dehydrate more and these would make nice gifts once I get it perfected a bit more. I’m thinking of adding a small string of lights to my next creation. Have you dehydrated roses or other flowers, if so I’d love any suggestion you may have.