In our house, it can take a bit of imagination to make any activity seem more enticing than screen time. Telling the kids they can make pictures by bashing flowers with a hammer, usually works a treat! Making hammered flower prints is great fun, here we used flowers from our garden, but I’ve also seen fab results over on Pinterest where people have used leaves.
It really is as simple as positioning your chosen flower on the paper, covering it with kitchen towel (we use 3 sheets), and hammering away, making sure you work across the entire area that the petals are positioned under.
We have found that flowers with thin delicate petals work the best. The blue flowers I believe are a type of rock cress, and we have also found that Wall Flowers work well too. Part of the joy of this activity is trying out lots of different sorts of flowers, so I don’t want to put in too many spoilers. I will say, however, that Chive flowers don’t look nearly as attractive, once they have had a hammer taken to them!
Once you have hammered over your covered area, gently peel back the kitchen towel, and if necessary, peel of any petal residue from your masterpiece. We found it easiest to add our flowers one at a time and repeated the process, but do whatever works for you.
For more nature craft inspiration, please check out our making eco prints post, and our making dye from lichen tutorial. If you have enjoyed this post, please share with others x
4 comments
It doesn’t work!
I’m using a raw hide hammer. Should it me metal?
Yeah I wonder if rawhide is too soft, I used a metal hammer. You need to break the structures inside the petal cells that hold the pigments so that they are released.
This is really cool and so simple to make. And the use of such sophisticated machinery has really won me over.
Haha. We try to make our tutorials as accessible as possible, but thought we’d splash out on the tool front for this one!