Directions for making potpourri that you can sell for profit or use around the house
Potpourri is a beautiful accent for your home and it smells great too! Potpourri freshens up the bathroom, adds a warmth to your living room or kitchen and gives your home a welcoming feel. Potpourri that is sold in stores is quite expensive and its quality is always questionable.
The best potpourri is usually the most expensive, but it doesn't have to be when you make your own. You've probably looked into a bowl of potpourri and said, what is this stuff?
There are things in potpourri that are totally unrecognizable to the average eye. Are they flowers? Are they nuts? Just what the heck is this stuff? Well, you can really make potpourri with any dried plant or flower you can find, the more interesting looking, the better and colors are more important than a plants naturally scent. Potpourri can be made in themes with different colors for fall, Christmas, even St. Patrick's day! You can make potpourri out of things you normally throw away and even from things you probably have in your own back yard. Let's get started!
Save the flowers of any arrangement you bring into the house. Potpourri can be made from just about any type of dried flower petals including roses, carnations, violets, you name it, if it's a flower, you can dry it and make it into potpourri. You can choose flowers for their scents or just for their looks. You can make potpourri any scent you want by using scented oils instead of relying on the flower's natural scents.
Herbs are also wonderful additions to any potpourri, you can use thyme, rosemary, mint or anything else you've got in your herb garden. There are several fragrant leaves that can be used as well such as eucalyptus which can be found in your local craft store. Spices can add wonderful scents as well such as cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. Any sort of dried fragrant plant or flowered can be tossed in to your mix.
Once you've decided on a mix of assorted dried goods, shake them all together with your scented oil if you are using it. You should store your potpourri in an airtight container for a week or so to let the aroma sink in to the mix. Potpourri can be kept for a long time in zip lock bags, glass jars or tins. If you'd like to add some color, try cedar chips dusted with a light wash of colored paint to suit your mix.
You can make potpourri to sell at craft shows, putting it into decorative glass jars with lace tucked onto the top of the jar or you can give it as gifts in baskets or bags. Place some around your home in glass bowls, jars or baskets and stick them under tables and into corners to give your home a glorious scent. If you can sew, you can fill small pouches with the potpourri and create sachets for your dresser drawers to keep you clothes smelling great.
If you find that you have bugs in your potpourri, after all these are plants, then you can put the potpourri in the freezer overnight, this will kill any bugs or eggs on the plants and you won't have to worry about them any more!
