After 23 Jobs, a Pandemic Garden Led Him to Pressed Flowers. Then 800 Prints Sold Out in 17 Hours

Keith Kralik is a pressed-flower artist in Paonia, Colorado, who makes botanical artwork from flowers, herbs, vegetables, fruit, insects and foliage under the name Flower Press Studio. After about 23 jobs and a burnout, he lost his restaurant job when Covid hit, and began pressing the surplus flowers from the garden his wife planted in 2020: “I have always loved nature and I saw some people pressing flowers on Instagram so I said why not.”

Keith Kralik works with flowers from local farms, which he visits every season – once in spring, once or twice in summer and once in fall. For a piece made from one farm, he collects and presses 500 to 1,000 flowers in traditional wooden presses he built himself. After about two months of pressing he can start creating, and winter is his design time for larger pieces, so one piece can take around 10 months from field to finish.

Keith Kralik is currently closed for public commissions, but is always open to discussing projects with interior designers and architects, botanical gardens, conservancy parks, small flower and vegetable farms and home gardens. Projects start from $2,500 and have no set timeline – “things cannot be rushed with projects.” His prints ship worldwide; originals have so far gone only to US buyers, though shipping abroad is possible at a higher cost.

Keith Kralik found his buyers through Instagram, where Flower Press Studio now has 670,000 followers. Two reels that went viral in 2023 reached 10 to 15 million views and brought close to 12,000 email subscribers – and today his email list of more than 30,000 people brings in more business than the social platforms.

When Covid hit, Keith was out of a restaurant job and left with lots of time. His wife wanted to grow a garden, and in 2020 she did. With a surplus of flowers, he began pressing them – “because why not.” He liked it, so he learned to make frames, bought a bunch of used power tools and built frames from free pallet wood. Then he learned to cut glass, “and I just went for it.”

Before that, nothing had stuck. He counts about 23 jobs where he was paid for his time, across many industries, and nothing felt great. He started his own business in 2014, then a few more, all while working two or three jobs to support them – until in 2019 he was so burnt out that he stopped everything. Pressing flowers gave him something he wanted to keep doing. “I do not think I will ever quit. I really like what I do.”

“Before pressing flowers came into my life, I would quit jobs every year, usually much sooner.”

From the start, Keith wanted to work with local flower farms. Imported flowers are not as beautiful in color, and many are sprayed with pesticides – “considering your skin is your largest organ”, he didn’t want to handle them day in and day out. He wanted a direct connection with the growers and stewards of the land.

Once he finds a farm, he drives to it each season and collects as many species as he can. For one piece, that means pressing 500 to 1,000 flowers in wooden presses he made himself. The blooms need careful monitoring during the early 7 to 10 days: every flower presses differently, and the craft is in understanding moisture and thinning a flower out to turn a 3D thing into a 2D thing while keeping the look of the original. “If you try to press a peony in a book without doing anything to it, you will get really bad results.”

For Farmluxe, the piece on the green background, he and his wife drove 40 hours to stay five days on Farmluxe farm on San Juan Island, Washington, collecting and pressing flowers. After about two months in the press, he can start creating; winter, when nothing grows, is his design time for larger pieces. The materials themselves are simple: archival paper sourced from suppliers around the world, tweezers, small and large scissors, and two kinds of glue, one thick and one thinner. “It is all quite inexpensive, but of course the flowers are not.”

Video: Keith Kralik

Rachel Parri, his wife, has been part of Flower Press Studio since 2022. She was always the one who helped so much with pressing, while Keith was the designer. In 2026 she stepped back from the day-to-day side of the business to focus on being “a good steward of the land we reside upon” in Paonia – rebuilding the soil, building out flower and vegetable gardens, a food forest and dead hedges for birds, and replacing grass with drought-tolerant plants.

Keith at work in the studio and the garden, and the pieces that came out of it. The white piece is Spring and the black one is Happiness – the two originals that put him on the map. The brown foliage piece is made from more than 1,000 leaves he collected in the fall of 2024. Photos: Rachel Parri.

About 70% of Keith’s print sales go to the US and 23% to the UK and the EU, with the rest in Canada and the rest of the world. Originals have so far sold only to US buyers, because shipping organic material abroad means customs headaches; for buyers who want to cover it, he would hire a California shipping company that works with customs worldwide, but crating and shipping make it costly.

His work ends up with “whoever really appreciates nature and botanical artwork.” He wants his designs to please the eye, show how beautiful nature can be, and help people see how much local farms bring to everyday life. Prices run from $100 to $500, with projects from $2,500.

Keith’s earliest customers came from flower shops. He decided the quickest way to start earning was the wedding industry – not many people were pressing wedding flowers in Denver, where he lived – and florists led him to their clients, the brides. In the debut season, Keith and his wife handled about 200 orders. “It was nuts.” It meant 12-hour days, seven days a week, for about eight months straight. “No business course would ever be able to prep you for actually being in business.”

Instagram has been Keith’s steady channel. In 2023, two reels went viral and brought in close to 12,000 email addresses. “Without those two reels, our email subscriber list was nothing.” Each reel was about 30 seconds long: he took about 60 videos of one to two minutes and cut them into one-second clips – a compilation of himself making the piece. The pieces were Spring and Happiness, the reels reached 10 to 15 million views, and email subscribers now bring in more business than the social platforms.

He also replies to thousands of comments. “I think that helped us grow our Online Course as people trust us.” More than 1,000 people have now enrolled in his How to Press Flowers course, and he teaches flower-pressing workshops in person.

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The wedding years were hard to sustain. Keith and his wife changed how they worked the next year and the year after – “little and big pivots each year were made to figure out how we can make this work without losing our minds.” In 2023 burnout made the decision easy: with no time for friends, nature or the garden, he stopped wedding work and switched to selling his own art online.

Time is the other struggle. Color-proofing prints before a release takes him a long time, Adobe longer, and his Shopify site longest. “I am not strong in tech, and well it is a huge bottleneck.” Perfectionism costs him time – “perfection is a horrible evil” – and as a one-person business he can’t cover every channel, from Pinterest to ads. “I still want to have a life and growing gardens on our property is practically a full-time job in itself.”

In August 2023, Keith released two designs to his new email list. About 800 prints sold out in 17 hours. “The moment we sold out of our first release gave me the confidence to pursue an e-commerce art business. It is as simple as that.”

Spring and Happiness were the originals that made it possible. They were the earliest pieces he made that were not wedding commissions, so he could use his own creative approach – and many more flowers to choose from than a single bouquet.

Next year Keith is starting a project he can see himself doing for many years: sharing beautiful versions of flowers, vegetables, pollinators and other botanicals, along with the stories of plants that have mattered to many generations before us. “Art, Connection, Craft, Stories. Nature can give so much to us, and this project will be about experiencing some slower times in our lives.” He may reopen wedding commissions in the future, limited to two or three a year, and would love to work with more farms and gardens in the US and abroad.

“What emotion do you get when you look at a field of wildflowers, a field of sunflowers, a bouquet of fresh-picked flowers from a garden? Nature is one constant in our lives that always promotes happiness and astonishment, and there is a story behind every bloom, every herb, and every farmer who cultivates the land for their seeds to grow into the beauty we get to witness and be a part of.”

Who: Keith Kralik (Flower Press Studio)
What: Pressed botanical artwork – originals, prints and a flower-pressing course
Where: Paonia, Colorado, USA
Started: September 2020
Audience: 670,000 Instagram followers, 92,000 on Facebook, 20,000 on TikTok, 12,000 on YouTube, 30,000+ email subscribers
Customers: 1,000+ students in his online course
Price range: $100–$500; projects from $2,500
Custom orders: Projects with designers, gardens and farms; closed for public commissions
Ships: Prints worldwide; originals within the US
Works with designers: Open to it
Channels: Social Media, Your Own Newsletter