Ashton Yates

I’m Ashton, a botanical and epoxy resin artist based in Cheshire in the UK. I’ve been passionate about florals for as long as I can remember; wearing them, decorating with them, growing them. I have pressed flowers since I was at University in 2008, when I received a bouquet from my (now) husband and wanted to learn how to preserve it. I still have the framed pressed-flowers displayed in our home; a rose and a chrysanthemum (two notoriously difficult flowers to press). They’ve certainly changed over the years, but so do we.

I press my flowers using traditional flower presses, and do not dye them or enhance them. There’s the odd occasion I’ll buy-in dyed flowers to use in my art, but personally, I prefer pressing them au-natural.

With pressing the flowers comes sourcing them too. I grow a lot of my own flowers here in Cheshire and in 2022 my in-laws kindly set aside a patch of land on their small-holding to grow what I wanted too.

The business began with selling framed pressed-flower compositions and stationary. However, it’s now expanded into epoxy resin art, which is a whole other realm of craftsmanship. Epoxy resin can be an overwhelming medium to work with, but I often find it therapeutic and wonderfully effective, particularly when you begin to incorporate colour and texture to compositions.