My eldest daughter celebrated her first wedding anniversary this June. The wedding was at an olive estate in the Tuscan hills of Italy. my daughter managed to save some of the flowers from her bouquet, along with her husband’s buttonhole, in the hope that we would be able to press them. I decided to make a picture using the pressed flowers as a present for their first anniversary. My daughter had two lockets in her bouquet with photographs of her late grandparents and she wanted these including. I had saved the fabric trimmings from her dress alterations and thought I could use those in some way to form part of the picture too. So, I gathered everything together and started playing around with ideas for a layout. I used the dress fabric scraps to create a miniature version of my daughter’s wedding dress.  The flowers, which were originally all white, had all yellowed significantly and I struggled to make an arrangement with them that was pleasing to the eye on a plain background. Eventually I decided on a split layout using the dress on one half and the flowers on the other half. I created a frame around the dress to separate it from the flowers in case they reacted together. I used slightly faded out photographs from the wedding as backgrounds which looked much better than a plain background. Arranging the flowers and foliage was quite challenging as most of them only had very short stems. I tried numerous combinations but they just looked like a pile of dead flowers. Eventually I hit on the idea of using nesting rectangles of card to layer up the flowers which looked much better and the groom’s buttonhole fit perfectly in centre. And here is the finished result. My daughter was delighted. It may not stunningly beautiful but it’s an authentic keepsake with all original contents from the actual day and all are now preserved in a box frame and should keep safely for years to come. If you scroll down you’ll see pictures showing the various stages of putting this together.