Meet Ashley Medina & Kamila Carr | Nature Preservation Artists

We had the good fortune of connecting with Ashley Medina & Kamila Carr and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Ashley Medina & Kamila Carr, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
We were two friends who loved our kids and exploring the great outdoors with them. When we decided to send our kiddos to school full time, we were searching for a way to fulfill our love of nature and creative sides that had previously been so focused on our kids. We craved some flexibility in our schedules and wanted a creative outlet to dive into.
One day, Ashley started using her pressed flowers to craft beautiful serving boards, and they turned out amazing! Everyone loved them, and it sparked an idea. We (Ashley and Kamila) teamed up to see if we could turn this creative endeavor into something marketable. We decided to do a trial run by gifting and selling some boards to friends and family, and their excitement made it clear—we were onto something special!
As we started making those boards, our imaginations ran wild, and we found ourselves creating all sorts of lovely home goods using nature’s treasures. We made serving trays and trinket dishes with the pressed flowers, but we didn’t stop there. Our love for the ocean’s beauty inspired us to learn how to dry seaweed and preserve it in resin pieces. This led us to create stunning resin jewelry featuring ocean treasures and so much more. We are constantly brainstorming and creating new ideas to incorporate natural materials into beautiful and purposeful art.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
What sets us apart from other resin artists is that we use pressed flowers in our work. Initially we pressed some of our own flowers but over time we have been able to use flowers that we have pressed ourselves. Some we have gathered from gardens weather it be our own of friends’. Pressing our own flowers has been a huge learning curve, each type of flower needs to be pressed in a special way with frequent paper changes in our flower presses. Even with a careful eye and timeline not all flowers turn out. Some flowers are better in resin than others so that has been a huge learning curve as well.
Another unique thing we bring to our art is the seaweed component. We dry our sea weed that we source locally. We never gather live its always washed up from the tides. We spend a lot of time combing the beaches during low tide and carefully making sure we take only pieces that have washed up and are not a home to any creatures.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
One of our favorite local things to do is wake up in the morning and and head out the door to a lovely coffee shop. Our favorites are Necessity, Lofty, coffee coffee and Pannikin, With a warm cup in hand we take a stroll on our salty north coast beaches. This is especially exciting when there’s a low tide and we can find some sea treasures. If it’s a high tide, we venture out to the trails, the local spots like Annie’s and Torrey pines. Food looks like a local eatery, some of the best places are anything in the Campfire family of restaurants, Foxpoint is a fun atmosphere, Atelier Manna, and Fish 101. Sunday mornings call for our local Leucadia farmers market, they have delicious food vendors from all parts of the globe. The merchant/goods booths are local and unique. It’s a great place to spend the day. We adore shopping local goodies from Shout & about, Khara collective, Raise Case Bags, and Always hungry a local boutique grocery store. All of these amazing establishments put a personal touch on everything you buy and so many things support local small batch businesses.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
We want to give a huge shout-out to our amazing husbands and families. They have been there for us, putting up with huge creative messes in our homes that eat up an entire room. They held down the fort while we went to events and markets, and while we had a late-night creative “ooh I’ve got to try this” sessions. Our families have put up with the scattering of nature throughout our homes, and the smell of resin drying. They saw flowers while on a walk and brought them home because they knew that mom would love to press them. They have come to hang out and help us at markets and have been our biggest cheerleaders.
Our friends, they have used our garage as an Etsy store when they needed it, have liked and supported our social media, have recommended us to customers.
Lastly, our customers, we couldn’t have made this far without them. Many have become friends and so many have entrusted us with creating beautiful custom pieces for themselves or loved ones. Gifting us permission to make mistakes and pivoting when needed. Thank you!

Website: https://gatherwild.net

Instagram: @gatherwildca

Other: gatherwildca@gmail.com

Image Credits
Kamila Carr & Ashley Medina