o save your rose petals and make a rose-bag for your room would be delightful.
While the rose is still fresh tear off its petals and scatter them thinly on a large platter. In this way expose them to the light. Every few hours pick up a handful and let them shower down, so as to expose both sides of the petals. The next day put them on a different platter, or you may use the same one provided you are careful to thoroughly dry it, for the plate will be very moist. The second day sprinkle a little salt over the petals, as this helps to purify them. Keep this treatment up until they are all dry, then put them in a thin muslin bag.
Cover the bag with violet, yellow, or pink china silk as best suits the color of your room. Tie it close at the top, as you would tie any other bag, and suspend it on a rocking-chair back, gas-fixture, or any convenient place. It will prove an attractive ornament as well as convey delicious odor. Use inch-wide satin ribbon the same color as the silk to tie the bag. Make a generous bow, with ends of irregular length. Cut the ends pointed or slanting, and this prevents the ribbon fraying.
Another way to use petals after they are dried would be to lay them between two pieces of pink cheese-cloth, cut the exact size of your bureau drawer. After the petals are in place knot the cheese-cloth, about two inches apart, all the way down and across with tiny bows of baby-width pink ribbon. This will help to keep the petals even; otherwise they would lay in a heap at one end. Put such a piece under your linen, and have it perfumed with roses.
It will take a great many roses to make either a fair-sized bag or drawer pad, but the dried petals may be saved and added to until you have enough. Keep them in a tightly covered china or glass receptacle. Never dry the petals on brass or other metals; dry them on marble, china, or glassware.
In the same way that rose petals are used try sweet-marjoram, lavender, or other pleasantly scented herbs or grasses. Besides being a delight to the eye and conveying delicate perfume, they may also serve as a reminder of a pleasant gift or enjoyable entertainment.
Try also balsam, pine, and hop bags. Make small ones not over ten inches long; cover with pretty silk, knot on narrow ribbon of a shade either complementary or to match, and suspend such from a chair back, door-knob, or curtain fixture.
A delicious bag would be made of pea-green silk or the green of the pine itself, and enlivened by a net-work of gold silk, the strings for which should be gold-colored satin or bullion thread.