I love hyacinths. Love love love. I love the scent, I love the colours, I love the shape of the little flowers, they are my very favourite flower. Tito found one for me at a Sobeys and brought it home – and of course before the blooms were done I had to press a few and make some jewellery :)

Preparing the hyacinth is tough. The blooms are small and delicate, and lose their colour if allowed to dry out too much. Press them too soon however and the juices in the petal make it stick to your pressing surface. I definitely had to work to find a sweet spot.

I love how these turned out – the colours are just gorgeous! The texture of the petals came through as well. I’ll definitely try this again, but with one of the bluer tones.

The care of a potted hyacinth is very easy, but I was dismayed to find out that store-bought indoor plants will really only bloom once. Something about the way the bulb is treated ‘forces’ it to bloom out of season and the result is a plant that will not bloom again afterwards. I don’t have a lot of experience with plants – does anyone know if this is true? Should I keep watering the plant, or say goodbye to it? So long as it looks alive I’m keeping it, even if it doesn’t bloom again. Anything else would feel mean.

The one above was a lark – I made that by crushing dried petals from the already dead blooms and mixing them in with the resin. The colour wasn’t retained as well, but the texture is interesting and I thought it was a worthwhile experiment.

Next up will be experiments using orchids, which I’ve never managed to keep alive, so I’m really crossing my fingers here ;)