When Keith Kralik pressed his first flower in 2021, he had no intention of repeating the act thousands of times for total strangers. He was just curious about how the poppy, grown by his partner, Rachel Parri, would look after being squished between paper and cardboard until it dried. But after pressing that bloom, Kralik came across a New Zealand–based floral preservation studio that presses and frames bridal bouquets into bespoke art pieces—and a business idea was born.

“No one in Denver was really doing [bouquet preservation] in that style,” Parri says. Kralik, who’s always brainstorming creative business concepts, thought they could fill the gap, and Parri agreed.

So, in 2022, the couple started Flower Press Studio out of their home in Denver’s Ruby Hill neighborhood. Kralik and Parri tag-teamed the pressing and design process in their makeshift basement workshop, complete with about 75 homemade chipboard presses and a waist-height workstation. It didn’t take long for their new business to bloom: That first year, they pressed and preserved more than 200 bridal bouquets.

“We were getting eight bouquets a week,” Parri says of their first summer wedding season. “It was insane.”

A few months into preserving bridal bouquets, Kralik started experimenting with what he calls a deconstructed look. Instead of clustering flowers in a way that mimics the shape of a bouquet, he arranged pressed petals, stems, and foliage like puzzle pieces, filling the entire paper or glass canvases with swirling patterns of flora. Leaves and larger blooms were separated from stems, smaller buds occupied the space between other flowers and leaves, and each collage drew the eye down paths created by stems and vibrant blossoms.

flower collage on a white background
Flower Press Studio’s collages feature hundreds of dried blooms, leaves, and stems. Photo courtesy of Flower Press Studio
flower collage on a black background
Photo courtesy of Flower Press Studio

“Some people use oil paints; some people use watercolor,” Parri says. “Keith uses flowers.”

These compositions became Flower Press Studio’s new signature style, and Kralik and Parri decided to stop doing bridal bouquet commissions in favor of more creative work.

Today, the couple sources flowers from local farms, including Little Hollow Flowers in Berthoud and Red Daisy Farm in Brighton. Parri handles drying and pressing the blooms—a painstaking, somewhat unpredictable process due to the varying shapes, sizes, and water contents of different plants. Kralik meticulously designs and glues each collage, and Parri then photographs the finished pieces and converts them into prints, which the couple plans to start selling on their website this spring (along with occasional original floral artworks). They’re also working on a product line that will superimpose the designs onto household items like tea towels or clothing, and after numerous requests from flora enthusiasts, Flower Press Studio now offers educational videos ranging from an in-depth flower-pressing course ($150) to a handful of free, mini tutorials on their YouTube channel.

This month, Kralik and Parri are also fulfilling a long-held dream of moving—themselves and their business—to the North Fork Valley, where they’ve owned a log cabin since 2022. They plan to grow some of their own flowers on the property’s two-and-a-half acres, collaborate with nearby flower farms, and eventually build out a workspace with ample natural light for designing and photographing their original pieces—all while enjoying the natural beauty that inspired them in the first place.