17 DIY Ideas With Rose Petals to Try

A dozen roses gets about five good days, and then the whole thing goes in the bin and everybody feels vaguely guilty about it. These DIY ideas with rose petals are the answer to that. Petals turn into rose water for your face, bath salts that smell like a spa, a vinegar that takes the sting out of a sunburn, a sugar scrub, a toner, a lip scrub and a pressed petal tray that is genuinely food safe once the epoxy cures. Most of them want dried petals, which means the sad bouquet on the counter right now is already halfway to being the supply list. Every tutorial below links back to the person who worked it out.

DIY Crafts With Roses

1. DIY Pressed Rose Petal Tray

DIY pressed rose petal tray, a white square tray of pressed petals and leaves under epoxy holding a teacup and shortbread

Start collecting fallen petals and the detailed little leaves that come with them, then press everything in a heavy book for four or five days. No flower press required, a stack of weights on top does the same job. Arrange the pressed pieces on a plain white tray, tack each one down with a dot of school glue right at the edges, because the epoxy turns petals translucent and any glue underneath will show. Mix the two-part epoxy, pour a thin coat, and blow the bubbles off after five minutes. Cured, it is food safe.

Get the full tutorial at Say Yes.

2. Vanilla Rose Petal Bath Salts

Vanilla rose petal bath salts, a glass jar of coarse white salt flecked with petals, a wooden spoon and loose petals

This one is four ingredients and about ten seconds of work, which feels like cheating. Everything goes into a food processor together and gets pulsed for a few seconds only, just long enough to break the petals into tiny flecks while the salt stays coarse and intact. Run it longer and you get powder. The vanilla fragrance oil sits underneath the soft floral note instead of fighting it. Whatever color your roses were is the color of the finished jar, so a mixed bouquet gives you pink, cream and yellow specks through white salt.

Get the full tutorial at Simply Designing with Ashley.

3. Rose Petal Heart

Rose petal heart, a pink and white ruffled heart wreath of artificial rose petals hanging on a paneled wood door

Two dollars of dollar store supplies and a glue gun, and you get a wall piece with real presence. The base is a plain heart shape with a ribbon hanger already on it. Work the outside edge first, laying a short line of hot glue and setting two or three artificial petals into it before it skins over, because a long bead cools faster than you can place anything. Then twist each petal around a pencil eraser, dab, and set. Keeping them close together is what gives you that full ruffled look instead of a sparse one.

Get the full tutorial at FrugElegance.

4. Homemade Rose Sugar Scrub

Homemade rose sugar scrub, a mason jar of pale pink scrub topped with dried rosebuds on wood scattered with petals

Everything goes in a blender or food processor and gets run until it is completely combined, which is the opposite of the bath salts above, so do not get the two habits mixed up. The result is rich enough that a very small amount covers your hands and arms. Use it in the shower or the tub rather than at the sink, because the petals tint the water rose pink and could mark a light towel. It keeps about a month at room temperature with no refrigeration, so make a small batch rather than a giant one.

Get the full tutorial at A Blossoming Life.

5. Rose Water

Rose water, a dark amber spray bottle lying on pale wood beside a heap of dried deep pink rose petals

Rose water is the gateway project here, partly because almost every other rose recipe wants some. Source matters more than technique: use petals that have never been sprayed, and if you are cutting your own, cut in the morning when the scent is strongest and get them into the pot the same day. Dried petals work year round and give a deeper ruby color. There are two methods out there, a hydrosol distillation and a basic simmer, and the basic one is what is written up here. Spritz it on skin, or use it as the base for the toner and the masks further down.

Get the full tutorial at Holistic Health Herbalist.

6. DIY Rose And Milk Bath Bomb

DIY rose and milk bath bomb, two white bath bombs flecked with pink petals among fresh roses, above a bowl of chopped petals

Dry ingredients first, baking soda, citric acid, cornstarch, milk powder and Epsom salt, with the dried petals snipped small and stirred through. Wet ingredients get combined separately, then go into the dry. The test is a fist: grab a handful and squeeze, and if it holds its shape you are ready to mold. If it crumbles, one or two light spritzes of water, no more, because overspraying starts the fizz early and then nothing holds together. Plastic ornament halves make good molds. Overfill each side, press hard enough that the excess squeezes out, and leave them in the mold overnight.

Get the full tutorial at A Pumpkin And A Princess.

7. Ring-o-Roses Fresh Rose Petal Wreath

Ring-o-Roses fresh rose petal wreath, a ring of pink and cream fresh petals hung by string on a dark rustic wood wall

Here is the rare rose project a two year old can actually do, and it makes no mess at all. Two paper plates get cut into a ring, contact paper is wound around one of them sticky side facing out, and the second plate goes on the back to cover the tacky underside. Then you hand over a pile of fresh petals and walk away. Small hands stick them wherever they land, and an adult quietly fills the bare spots afterward so the plate does not show. Add a string and hang it on the front door. Fresh petals are soft and they smell wonderful, which turns the whole thing into a sensory activity by accident.

Get the full tutorial at Teach Me Mommy.

8. Rose Petal Vinegar

Rose petal vinegar, a round corked bottle of deep red infused vinegar on stone with pink roses and green leaves behind

Dark pink or red petals make by far the most vivid color, so save the deep ones for this. Let cut flowers sit outside for a while first and give any passengers a chance to leave, which sounds fussy until you consider the alternative. Heat the vinegar almost to a simmer before pouring it over the packed jar of petals, which kickstarts the infusion and brings the color up faster. Apple cider vinegar is the usual pick. Cover the jar with plastic wrap under the lid, because vinegar eats metal, and leave it somewhere cool and dark for a few weeks. It keeps a year, though the color fades in sunlight.

Get the full tutorial at The Nerdy Farm Wife.

9. Honey Rose Petal And Oat Face Cleaner

Honey rose petal oat face cleaner, a glass jar of reddish brown oat paste on wood beside a spoon of honey and dried petals

Soap free, which is the whole point of it. Dried petals and oats go into a coffee grinder or a mortar and pestle together and get ground coarse, not fine, so the oats still have some scrub left in them. That mixture goes in a small jar with honey and your chosen oil, and gets stirred properly. Rosehip seed oil is the luxury pick, but sweet almond, hemp or sunflower all work and cost a fraction as much. Give it a stir before each use, because honey settles. It keeps one to two months as long as no water gets into the jar, which means dry hands going in.

Get the full tutorial at Strangers and Pilgrims on Earth.

10. Rose Petal Perfume

Rose petal perfume, an overhead tray on a pink mat with a mortar and pestle, sieve, bowls, spoons and glass perfume bottles

This is a whole tray of small jobs rather than one project, which is exactly why it works so well with a preschooler. Petals get pounded in a mortar and pestle, water gets poured and stirred, the mixture gets strained through a sieve, then funneled into a little bottle and capped. Pouring, spooning, stirring, straining, screwing a lid on, wiping up with a sponge. Handsome glass bottles are tempting but the delicate blown-glass ones have tops that snap almost immediately, so pick something sturdier unless you are very sure. Old roses from a birthday or an anniversary are the perfect supply.

Get the full tutorial at Living Montessori Now.

11. Homemade Rose Oil

Homemade rose oil, a bottle of golden infused oil with a floral label standing on white wood against a bright pink background

Rose essential oil starts around two hundred dollars a bottle, and anything meaningfully cheaper is almost certainly cut with something else. Infused rose oil is not the same molecule, but it carries the skin benefits at a fraction of the price and you control what it is infused into. Dried petals are what you want here, not fresh, and a bouquet hung upside down to dry after it fades gives you the supply for free. Pick the carrier oil to suit your own skin, which is the real advantage of making it yourself, and keep a jar on hand because it turns up as an ingredient in half the other recipes.

Get the full tutorial at Everything Pretty.

12. DIY Rosewater Face Toner

DIY rosewater face toner, three panels of a dropper bottle of toner, red petals steeping in a bowl and a jar of rose water

Two ingredients, roses and water, and then the toner is just that rose water put to work on a cotton pad. Red petals give the deep pink you see in the jar. The reason this keeps showing up on lists is that it is genuinely two ingredients, there is a step by step video on the source page if you would rather watch than read, and the recipe has held five stars across dozens of reviews, which is a more honest signal than any blogger’s own adjectives. Store the finished toner cold, and make small batches since there is nothing in it to preserve it.

Get the full tutorial at The Healthy Maven.

13. Rose Petal Beads

Rose petal beads, a glass blender jar with a red lid standing on a white surface surrounded by loose bright pink rose petals

Rose beads are an old craft and the smell is the whole reason they exist, since crushing petals is what releases the scent. Five cups of the most fragrant petals go into a blender in batches with a little water, about two tablespoons per cup of flowers, and get chopped to a fine paste. Too watery, blot it with paper towel. With gloves on and a drop of rose oil on your fingers, roll marble-sized beads and push a toothpick through each one. They harden on a baking sheet over several days, then come off the toothpick and sit two days more. Then they string.

Get the full tutorial at Education.com.

14. Rose Petal And Mint Lip Scrub

Rose petal and mint lip scrub, a glass jar of white sugar scrub flecked with petals on pale wood with a wooden spoon

Castor sugar, not granulated, and that is not fussiness. Castor is finer than granulated but coarser than powdered, and ordinary granulated sugar is genuinely rough on the thin skin of your lips. Jojoba oil is the carrier of choice because it is non-greasy and does not clog pores, though another oil will work if you prefer one. Peppermint essential oil rather than a fragrance oil, since this is going on your face and then, realistically, into your mouth. A handful of dried petals in any color goes through it. Small glass jars, and it makes a very good little gift.

Get the full tutorial at Simply Designing with Ashley.

15. Rose Petal Body Scrub

Rose petal body scrub, a glass jar of white sugar scrub flecked with red petals sitting on burlap against dark gray wood

Use dried petals, not fresh, and there is a good reason for it. Fresh petals lose their color fast in a scrub and end up looking like soggy little scraps of paper, and worse, they can introduce enough moisture to let mold grow in the finished jar. Dried petals hold both color and scent much better. If fresh is all you have, drying them is easy: spread clean petals on paper towel on the counter and leave them until they are completely dry, or set them in the sun to speed it along. Then make the scrub. It photographs beautifully on a square of burlap, which is half the gift.

Get the full tutorial at Holistic Health Herbalist.

16. Soothing Rose Facial Mask

Soothing rose facial mask, a white bowl of pink mask paste on a bamboo board with a tipped jar of rose clay and dried petals

Powdered rose petals do the soothing here, ground fresh rather than bought pre-powdered, and the rest of the ingredient list is short and the kind of thing you already own. It suits every skin type, which is unusual for a mask, so it works whether yours breaks out or goes dry and tight. The source puts it well: the best side effect is that when small children find you with pink mud all over your face, whatever emergency they were bringing you suddenly stops being urgent. There is a printable card at the end of the tutorial.

Get the full tutorial at A Better Way to Thrive.

17. Rose Petal Centerpiece

Rose petal centerpiece, two panels of hurricane vases on candlesticks, split peas and pillar candles above, pink petals below

The trick is that there is no trick: a thrift store or dollar store glass vase gets glued rim-down onto a glass candlestick, and that is the entire build. Wash and dry both first, run the adhesive around the rim of the candlestick with a toothpick, press the vase on and let it set. The author’s own husband did not believe she had made them. Fill each one with water, float a few rose petals and drop a floating candle on top. Three of them grouped at different heights is what makes a table look styled rather than decorated.

Get the full tutorial at Two Twenty One.