“Getting the flowers, I’ve had to learn to be very, very creative, because I like to have a wide variety on my table,” Langman said. “We have a desert willow that provides me with all of our desert willow flowers. Our neighbors happen to have an oleander that I can see from my living room, as soon as there’s a fresh flower. Then I go into the desert, and I get yucca and desert senna.”
Once the blooms have been collected, Langman dries them by pressing them flat or placing them carefully in silica gel.
“Not all flowers I treat with silica gel because silica gel can be quite rough on the flowers,” she said. “Every flower is different. There’s some flowers that will be dry in one day, and then there’s other flowers that will take weeks to dry.”
The dried flowers are then stored with dozens of others in clear organizing drawers in her workspace until she turns them into a finished piece of wearable floral art.
“I’ve got all these drawers with everything labeled as to what’s in there, and I can keep things in here for quite a long time, so that when I’m ready to make the earrings, I just take whatever it is I need,” Langman said. “I have to go through large volumes of flowers, usually to find two that look the same.”
Before dipping the flowers in the resin, Langman uses toothpicks to painstakingly paint the resin on to add strength to the delicate petals. Then it’s time for a final dip in resin to create a smooth and durable coating.
“I’ll just start off putting it onto the petals, and then I’ll put it under the lamp petal by petal, and then build it up onto these stems until I’ve got pretty much a coating of resin over the whole thing,” she said. “I have to be so delicate with them, because as soon as you dip a flower, it’s like sticking a piece of tissue in water, and just pulling.”
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