Microwaved Flowers - I enjoy a recipe for this but it's exceptionally sketchy and I can't remember why I looked-for to. ...
Answers: Put a layer (at tiniest 1/4") of silica gel, washed quartz sand, or cornmeal (the dustiest option) contained by a cardboard box large adequate to contain the flower. Put the flower on top of the silica gel (or sand or cornmeal), and crowd in around and below the flower in small layer, making sure to support underneath all petals earlier you start filling more desiccant around them. Continue until the flower is completely buried, the desiccant is stratum, and there is at tiniest 1/4" of desiccant on top of the flower.
Place the box within a microwave oven and set it to high for 30 second. Remove and wait until the desiccant is cool.
Gently remove adequate desiccant to see if the flower is dry
all the style through. The receptacle (the thick portion that the sepals and petals and stamens and pistils is attached to) will probably be the closing to dry.
If the flower isn't dry, re-bury in desiccant, nuke again, repeat.
When fully dry, use a camelhair brush to placidly remove all traces of desiccant.
How long microwave drying will nick is dependent on the desiccant, the amount of desiccant, the wattage of the oven and the amount of water the desiccant have already absorbed. You'll probably ruin a few flowers previously you get the methodology down. You will necessitate to change times when switching to a different species, a different size box, or a different desiccant.
When I be doing this sort of thing for museum display work, the flowers be next coated next to a clear shellac type substance, and then airbrushed to restore color. Excellent preservation, but the flowers be smaller than when they were fresh.
If you can't remember why you needed to,
you are probably better not doing it.