Meet Keith Kralik and Rachel Parri of Flower Press Studio

Today we’d like to introduce you to Keith Kralik and Rachel Parri. They and their team shared their story with us below:

Rachel has always wanted a garden and when we first purchased our home in October 2019, buying flower and vegetable seeds to plant in the spring was a top priority. Then Covid happened and we spent the lockdown building out our first garden. Rachel had thrown some poppy seeds around the yard before all the snow melted and once they bloomed, Keith decided to try pressing one. It was the first flower he had ever pressed.

Fast forward to fall 2021 and Keith having the entrepreneurial mind that he has, got the idea to start a wedding bouquet pressing business. A woman in New Zealand was doing this at the time, so he said, “Why not in Denver?”. We booked our first wedding client in October 2021 and through word of mouth from our florist contacts, we started booking clients for the 2022 wedding season. We booked over 200 clients during the 2022 season and pressed 50 bouquets in September alone. That was the point where we started rethinking the sustainability of our business and whether we’d be able to maintain our sanity by continuing with our 2022 business model.

We knew we didn’t want to expand and hire employees. Neither of us wanted to manage people. We love the size and the detail of the pieces we create and we knew we’d get bored if we had to continue doing only bridal work and be confined to that box. So we pivoted in 2023, taking on far fewer clients, and taking a chance on selling prints. We had our first print release this past August and it went amazingly well, so we are going to try riding this wave for a bit and carve out time to focus on our original art.

We’ve become enamored with working with flowers grown by the small flower farm so we are trying to work their flowers into our business model more and more. Sustainability is important to us and we’d much rather work with the small grower and flowers that are in season rather than imported, out-of-season flowers. We don’t want to be pressing lisianthus in the spring and peonies in the fall. We embrace the seasonality of flowers and we want this to be reflected in our work. 99 percent of the time we can distinguish between flowers that have been imported vs. flowers that have been locally grown. There IS a difference!

Can you talk to us about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Oh goodness no. This has been an extremely bumpy road. There IS a learning curve to pressing flowers. We did throw caution to the wind and dove into this business before we knew what we were doing. But I think this is the best way to start most things, otherwise, you’ll find yourself never starting if you overthink it too much. We have both been guilty of this in past endeavors. Perfection is the killer of progress and creativity and overthinking often does do more harm than good. This business was truly trial by fire.

Learning how to frame these pieces was a struggle. Keith apprenticed at a priceless frame shop. I don’t know where we’d be without their help. Shipping these extremely delicate, original pieces was and continues to be a struggle. Learning proper flower-pressing techniques was a struggle. We would clean up wedding flowers just to acquire mass amounts of flowers to practice on for free. Our first peony season was awful. I can’t even tell you how many peonies we messed up before we got them right. Same for dahlias. We are still trying to figure out the best way to press dahlias.

Taking personal time for ourselves was a struggle and continues to be a struggle. Pressing flowers for a job can be romanticized like most creative jobs are, and while it comes with its amazing moments, there’s a lot of stress that happens behind the scenes. Dealing with something as sentimental as somebody’s wedding flowers puts more pressure on the business. It’s not like if they go out for dinner and get a bad piece of steak, it can be recooked and replaced. You have one chance to get it right. Every single piece we make is a commissioned piece and creating original art day in and day out as we have been is mentally draining. This is why we took on far fewer commissions for 2023 and none for 2024. We put our heart and soul into these pieces and there’s only so much heart and soul a person can give. We need time to get some creative energy back, hence us taking 2024 off from commissions to refill our cups to focus on our creative flower-pressing endeavors.

Recently with our Instagram account blowing up, we’ve gotten a lot of requests for things we never imagined we’d be making decisions on. So now we are suffering a bit from decision fatigue. It’s all uncharted territory for both of us, so now we are trying to figure out how to divide and manage it all as best we can. conquer. We will see where this all goes. Ha, it’s been a wildly exhausting and equally exciting journey. I don’t think the road to success is ever an easy journey though. It takes grit and work. Lots of work.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
We press flowers and are focusing on creating artwork featuring flowers grown by the small flower farm. In 2024, we are going to release a series of prints created with pressed flowers grown by five flower farms in the Denver area; Blossom and Branch, Artemis, Little Hollow, Red Daisy, and Plume and Furrow.

We will have one more print release in November 2023. We plan on having 3 to 4 print releases a year. The best way to get information on these upcoming releases is to subscribe to our email list on our website as subscribers get early access to these releases.

We hope to build out our YouTube Channel and eventually get a “How to Press Flowers” course out there.

We signed a contract with Cobble Hill Puzzle Company. The puzzles will be released as early as October 2023 to retail buyers. We also signed a contract with a wallpaper company, Area Environments, and our patterns will be offered as wallpaper starting in Spring 2024. We are also hoping to get into other textiles such as fabric.

We are moving to Paonia, CO in May 2024 and we hope to build out that property with a medicinal herb, a dyed flower, and a pressed flower garden as we would love to host workshops out of our home one day. The workshop thing would be more of a 2025/2026 goal. We want to continue to work with the small flower farmer as well. We would love to road trip to one or two flower farms each year in a similar area to press a selection of their flowers to make new pieces from.

Although we will not be taking on any new commissions until sometime in 2025, we will have originals to sell most likely starting summer of 2024. We are trying to break out of the traditional box of what people imagine pressed flower art to look like. We are just getting started.

We all have different ways of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
Success, for us, is maintaining a healthy work-life balance. We both love spending time in the mountains, so carving out time to do what we love recharges our batteries. We aren’t trying to take over the world. We want to educate others. There will be a lot of info we put out on YouTube and in our courses that will greatly help people. We think it’s absolutely amazing when others comment to us how we inspired them and then show us what they made using pressed flowers. It’s a good feeling in our stomachs.

We truly believe health is wealth. We want to press flowers grown with little to no pesticides. We want to bring awareness to the small farmers. We want to eat good food and have time to spend with those we love. We want to share our home with our friends and love and laugh and not carry too much stress around with us. Are we looking for a unicorn? Maybe.

We understand that life comes with unavoidable hard days and we aren’t asking for smooth seas each day. We know not to quit on a shit day. Success is figuring out how to create balance; when to say no, when to say, “good enough”, when to stop, and when to keep going. Success is knowing your limits and creating boundaries, but also pushing those limits and expanding your boundaries.

Success is figuring out how to sit with discomfort but also be able to work through those uncomfortable moments without them disrupting your entire life. Like Teddy Roosevelt said, “Nothing in this world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty”. Success is a challenge, but these challenges keep our hearts beating.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://flowerpressstudio.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/flowerpressstudio_/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FlowerPressStudio
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@flowerpressstudio

Image Credits
Rachel with Flower Press Studio