MY LIGHT BULB MOMENT

Card designer Caroline Gardner

LEADING greeting card maker, Caroline Gardner, 53, lives with her husband, Angus. They have four children aged 17 to 27. IT WAS 1993, and I’d been working as a painter for five years after studying at the Chelsea College Of Arts in London. One day, I met my neighbour, an art gallery owner, and we hit it off.

Not long afterwards, a designer let her down last minute, so she asked if I could make some cards for The Conran Shop.

The brief was to use metal, so I bought a reel of gold wire, bent it into simple shapes — a heart, a flower, a pram — and fixed them on to white card.

The 70 I made sold out in two days, and the shop asked for 600 more.

Making them at my kitchen table, I had to ratchet it up pretty fast, but I loved it and thought that I might make money from it.

I drove round London and gave samples to gift shops.

I had an 80% uptake and soon needed help. In the first year, turnover doubled every month, but I found it intense. I was working until 2am and couldn’t keep up.

My light bulb moment came when I noticed a little gold emblem stamped on my father’s headed paper.

I realised that stamping the designs would speedup production.

I found a traditional printers in East London, which hand-pressed each card. It was a game changer — now I could make thousands.

By the time my youngest son was born in 2000, we had distributors across Britain and abroad. My style has changed a lot — I’ve been through a pattern-loving phase, but I’m returning to minimalist designs.

After all, I have those little pieces of wire to thank for the past 24 years of success.

carolinegardner.com