Why Cherished Blooms frames are a little different

Every Cherished Blooms preserved flower frame is built to protect your keepsake for the long term, and it starts with a problem I ran into early on.

I've spent a long time thinking about how flowers in their frames hold up in the Gold Coast climate. I hadn't seen fluctuations like this until I moved to Queensland: flowers I'd dried changing colour within a week of being out in the open, even fading inside sealed containers.

So I went looking. I asked around, searched social media, and eventually came across a product in the US, a frame chamber with indicating crystals built in. That gave me an idea. I'd already been placing silica sachets behind flowers, but it was fiddly work once the flowers were set in place, and you can't leave them exposed too long. They absorb moisture quickly and stop doing their job.

I went looking for a framer who'd work through the problem with me, and found Hayden at Real Choice Framing. Together we devised a small pocket behind the flowers, sized to hold enough silica for the volume of the frame, with a ventilation board separating the pocket from the flowers themselves. Hayden built the prototype, and that's where our partnership started.

I can't promise this system is foolproof, or that it fully controls the atmosphere inside every frame. What I can say is that it gives your flowers a far more controlled environment than a standard frame. Nothing natural lasts forever, colour shifts, materials change, but this system gives your flowers the best environment I know how to give them.

The materials behind it

Every frame uses premium grade matt board, in a neutralised, acid-free environment, so nothing in the frame itself works against your flowers over time. We use shadow box frames, with an average depth of 7-8mm, to hold your flowers properly in their full form so they're not touching the glass.

For the glass, I use AR70 art glass: a museum and conservation-grade glass, not what you'd typically find in a standard picture frame. It's anti-reflective, cutting reflections down to less than 1%, so you're looking at your flowers, not your own reflection or room. It's also rated to block around 70% of UV light, one of the biggest causes of colour fade in preserved flowers over time.

It's also the reason a Cherished Blooms shadow box frame costs more than a standard one. Art glass like this isn't cheap, and I could use standard glass to bring the price down, but for something as personal as a wedding bouquet or a memorial arrangement, I didn't want to cut the one material doing the most to protect the flowers long-term.

Behind the flowers, the humidity system relies on professional-grade silica gel, housed in breathable indicator packets, a step up from the small desiccant sachets sold for general household use. Silica gel works by drawing moisture out of the air inside the frame, which keeps humidity low and helps prevent mould, condensation and general deterioration over time. I won't go into the exact setup, but it's built to manage moisture precisely, not just soak it up and stop.

This kind of care isn't something you'll find in a standard frame off the shelf. Every part of it, the glass, the humidity system behind the flowers, was designed and specifically built to give your preserved blooms the best possible start. It's that small amount of extra thought that makes the real difference, and it's what sets Cherished Blooms apart.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/9c82de_2f00af29796249928b411cae35b647e9/720p/mp4/file.mp4

A behind-the-scenes look at Real Choice Framers building one of our custom shadow box frames

If you're curious about the frame options this system comes in, you can see current sizes, colours and finishes here, or explore the frame that suits your piece on our pricing page. And if you're ready to start, you can book your flower preservation or get in touch about memorial preservation any time.