Crystallise me

I'm a little nervous. It's the first week of November and having just moved into my new house {yes, very exciting!} it would be lovely to spend some time here. But, and it's a big one, I just don't have that option. From here until the end of November I am off working all over the place and then I am off on a little holiday for a month. Which means I won't get to live in my new house for the whole of December... Back to Mexico I go and I'm happy that I will be coming back with my tan!

In this week that I have in my lovely new home I have one more fantastic shoot with the gorgeously talented Yolene {@cremedacitron}. She is a seriously talented and lovely person and I feel that I've made a real friend.

In preparation for this exciting shoot {pictures to follow} I had to get my crystallisation on. Spending a couple of hours with the sun flooding through my new kitchen window was a joy. A fiddly, messy and sometimes quite frustrating joy that was fun, maybe I could start a flower crystallisation factory...hmmm

I went with some gorgeously pink tinged hydrangeas and some roses....are you excited to see how I'm going to use them???

It's such a simple process and once done they can last for quite a while if stored correctly. An air tight container with some kitchen paper in between  layers so the moisture doesn't circulate. So, what do you need....an egg white and caster sugar. Yeah. It really is that easy!

Gently pull off individual petals, be really careful with this as they will bruise and this can show! If your flowers are really iccle then I would crystallise the whole thing {I did this for the individual hydrangea flowers}. In order for them to keep for months you must crystallise both sides. So paint with egg white, gently, and then sprinkle with caster sugar. If you dip I find that the sugar sticks in blobs rather than a beautiful shimmer of sugar.

So once you've painted and sprinkled lay, not touching, on newspaper and preferably in a warm place/in the sun so that they dry asap.

Once dry, store as mentioned above. Happy crystallising.