10 Dried Flower Crafts You Can Make to Sell

As a cold-climate flower farmer, your peak season is typically from June to August. But what about the quieter fall and winter months?

If you’re looking to diversify your income and extend your cut flower business beyond the traditional growing season, dried flower crafts are the perfect solution! By transforming the flowers you probably weren’t going to use anyway into beautiful, handmade creations, you can generate additional revenue and easily sell your wares between fall and winter at markets, craft sales, or on your online store at any time of the year.

Whether you’re a seasoned flower farmer or a hobbyist grower, these ten dried flower craft ideas will help you turn your surplus flowers into stunning, profitable products (or into beautiful gifts for family and friends, if that’s more your style!).

Dried Flower Crafts for Flower Farmers

1. Dried Flower Wreaths

This is probably the most common way of making something with your dried flowers. It can take many more dried flowers than you’d expect, though, and some of the full, beautiful wreaths you might see on Instagram can easily sell for $200-300. While that’s a lot of money, you might not have enough dried flowers to produce many of these bigger wreaths. In that case, you may want to make smaller wreaths or half wreaths using embroidery hoops or similar materials.

Want to know which flowers to grow for drying? Check out this blog post!

2. Eco-Printing with Fresh Flowers

Eco-printing is a great craft for stress relief as you get to hammer plants. Although very fun, it can be quite labour-intensive. You’ll need to research mordanting the fabric first. There are a few things you can mordant with and various combinations of materials that give you different results. You’ll actively need to research what you want to do. You’ll also need to source 100% cotton or linen, as this doesn’t work as well with synthetic fabrics.

You can also eco-print with pressed flowers and steam in winter!

3. Dried Flower Magnets

Dried flower magnets are one of the simplest possible crafts you can make. As long as you have dried flowers, a glue gun, and some sort of object to put them on, you’re good to go! I like cheap wooden discs and find it’s a very fun and easy craft that sells well at markets and craft sales.

4. Dried Flower Clay Ornaments

You can make homemade clay and press dried flowers into it, lift the flowers off, and be left with the impression of the flower. After that, you can choose to put some sort of glaze on it or just bake it and be done. You can do this in a variety of sizes, including ones you can attach to fish hooks for earrings, etc. If you have more experience with clay, you could even press flowers into mugs, bowls, or other dishes.

5. Dried Flower Jewellery

I don’t make this, but I partnered with Chemist Creations one year, and I love the piece she made me with Queen Anne’s lace. If you’re going to do this, you’ll need to grow flowers that are very small, as most people don’t want jewelry with larger flowers, at least at the point in time I’m writing this. Chemist Creations is sort of on hiatus right now, but I had a great time collaborating with her. (Photos coming soon!)

6. Dried Flower Glass Ornaments

If you would like to make glass ornaments, make sure that you have enough dried flowers that are small enough to fit through the opening. Theme your colours and tie them with a beautiful ribbon for a lovely keepsake. When you’re buying the ornament, carefully look at the width of the top of the ornament because it will determine how big the flowers added need to be. Whenever I am working with dried flower, I save the scraps from statice, strawflowers, and more to put in these ornaments.

7. Dried Allium Holiday Decor

From Shifting Roots’ reader, Breda Keegan:

This is my only dried flower craft, but I love it, and it’s in its 2nd year. It matches colours I like and my interest in natural elements in my home. I garden & crochet flowers sometimes, but I am not into arranging flowers generally. I was inspired by a Sarah Raven YouTube video to save & dry my allium seedheads. She mentioned she uses the heads as Christmas tree decorations. Here’s what I did (I just happened to have red & green spray paint on hand). Metallics or any colours of one’s choice work (even allium flower colours). Once the seedheads and attached stem have dried in your garage or on the potting table/shed, the seeds can be shaken into paper bags. Then they are ready to save as is or for spray painting.  I would advise wearing a mask & spraying in a well-ventilated area.

Here’s the pictorial step by step…. from garden to vase (or Christmas tree or tabletop centrepiece, etc.).

8. Pressed Flower Pumpkins

These pressed flower pumpkins are super easy to make and last such a long time! Check out the how-to here: How to Make The Most Aesthetic Pressed Flower Pumpkin Decor.

9. Mini Wreath Ornaments

These are super easy and fun to make! Make sure you put them in a spot where children can’t get at them, and when you’re storing them away for the year, wrap them in tissue paper so they last as long as possible!

10. Dried Flower Pumpkins

I love making dried flower pumpkins! I’ve made the more traditional arrangement for a while now, but this year, I tried something new by hot-gluing the flowers in different patterns around the pumpkins. These were a big hit, so I’ll definitely be doing this again next year!

If you liked this blog post, find me on Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram for more cold-climate vegetable gardening tips, delicious recipes, and cut flower goodness! I also make weekly videos over on my YouTube channel. I hope to see you there!

Want to start your own cut flower business?

Marketing is the core of a successful flower-farming business. This bundle will teach you the basics of running the back end of your business, targeting your ideal customer, making money as a flower farmer, pricing your work, standing out from the competition, and so much more! Plus, at the end, we bring it all together and show you how to make your own plan that you can easily implement–so you don’t forget about your main goals as the days and months slip by!