Salt dough: Use equal amounts of packed highly scented
rose petals and salt, and half as much distilled water (or
rainwater)... Mash the petals and salt together in a
cast-iron pot or pan, then add the water. If you use a rusty
pan (or add some rusty nails) and heat the mixture, it will
turn black.
Flour dough: Mix 1 3/4 cups white flour, 1/4 cup salt,
and enough water to make a bread-like dough. Add in 3 cups
finely chopped scented rose petals, working them into the
dough thoroughly.
The technique: Roll the dough out on floured wax paper to
1/4" thick and cut circles out with a thimble. ...Or if
you don’t care so much to have each bead of uniform size,
roll the dough into thin snakes and pinch off bits. Roll
each bead amount in the palms of your hands to make it
smooth. (You can get fancy and make petal-like protuberances
with a device like a cuticle pusher.) String the beads on
thin florist’s wire so that they don’t touch each other.
Stretch the wires across a dark room (closet?) to dry,
turning the beads every so often so they don’t stick to
the wire. String the beads on cording or dental floss dipped
in rose oil so that the insides of the beads soak some up
"for posterity".
(I still have a string of rose petal beads my mother made
as a teenager in the 1930s... and they still smell rather
rosy!)
