Hi, so nice to meet you!

I've pressed tens of thousands of flowers since 2021 and worked with over 350 brides to preserve their bouquets.

Pressing flowers is my profession, my obsession, and the reason I started this blog.

My professional practice, Bloom & Make, is based in the Chicago area, where I work primarily with brides who want their flowers preserved after the wedding. Before that, I spent years in corporate writing and editing. In September 2025, I left to do this full-time.

The growing side came later, and it changed everything. I've been growing a cutting garden from seed since 2018, and figuring out which flowers to grow specifically for pressing (in a partly sunny yard, in zone 6b, with a short Midwest season) taught me things I couldn't have learned any other way.

You just press differently when you grow the flower yourself. You know exactly when it was harvested, how long it sat in a vase, whether the morning was humid. That knowledge shows up in the results.

Here, I teach both. How to press flowers with confidence, how to troubleshoot what's going wrong, and how to grow the flowers worth pressing in the first place.

Whether you have a garden or you're buying from a farmers’ market, there's a lot to learn. I've made enough mistakes for both of us.

Happy pressing!
Ana