WILD CARDS
Wildflower Illustration Co started out as a hobby and a side hustle. Now, it is a fully fledged business offering stationery that celebrates the heartfelt simplicity of the handwritten message
Wildflower Illustration Co started out as a hobby but is now a fully fledged business offering stationery that celebrates the handwritten message
When Rebecca Mcmillan was a child, her great-uncle encouraged her to paint, sending her artbooks and sketches. Colin Mcmillan painted in the Royal Navy and some of his work is held at the Imperial War Museum. “I loved receiving his packages,” says Rebecca from her studio in the Cotswolds. “It was one of my first experiences of the joy of post.”
Today, Rebecca runs the stationery business Wildflower Illustration Co with her husband, Karl Maguire. She hand-paints cards with designs inspired by nature to encourage us all to write to each other. “Magic happens when you put pen to paper,” she says. “It’s communication from the heart… You select the paper and pen you want to use and all those tiny experiences play into the overall experience.”
THE WRITE LINES
When Rebecca talks about her great-uncle, her business seems a natural fit, but Wildflower Illustration Co started as a side project. In 2010, while studying philosophy and politics at university, she sold handpainted cards through Etsy and at craft fairs, but barely thought about marketing or profits – the business just grew organically. In 2013, towards the end of her degree, Rebecca was approached by Not on the High Street. Expanding into wedding stationery, she began to see returns.
Rebecca then went travelling with Karl, sending illustrations back to her mum in the UK, who would sell them for her: “Travelling gave Karl and I perspective. We talked a lot about what we could do with the business.”
By 2015, the couple had settled in Cheltenham and got a dog – Martha, a springer-spaniel whippet-cross – and they decided to give the company a go. Karl gave up his job as a primary school teacher, while Rebecca trained as a solicitor, painting on the side to fulfil orders. After qualifying in 2017, she left law to join the business full-time.
WILD AND FREE
Rebecca and Karl now create greetings cards, notecards and prints, as well as fulfilling commissions for wedding stationery, in watercolour and ink. Inspiration comes from the natural world and Rebecca’s love of anything wild and free. She particularly loves painting sea asters. “Wild flowers represent freedom,” she says. “I love the fact they don’t have to be cultivated – they just grow and grow, adding a splash of colour to even the most barren ground.”
Rebecca paints for two days a week, spending the rest of the time doing the marketing and social media for the business, as well as looking for ideas. “I used to be more sporadic and let creativity come to me,” she says, “but
“Magic happens when you put pen to paper – it’s communication from the heart”
now we offer a subscription service with new designs each month, so I have to be stricter about it. Fortunately, when I make space for creativity, it comes to fill it!”
A few years ago, the couple started the Paper Elephant Project, creating cards for people wanting to write to a friend or relative going through a difficult time. “I read how many people don’t contact someone they know with poor mental health just because they don’t know what to say,” Rebecca says. “We worked with a psychologist to come up with messages to put on cards so people wouldn’t be worried about saying the wrong thing.”
Then, last year, during the first lockdown, they put together a kit called Birdsong, comprising eight activities to help people reconnect to the world around them. It includes a guide to using your senses and the suggestion to write to an old friend. “I was feeling overwhelmed, so decided to put my phone away for a few weeks,” Rebecca says. “I felt a major shift. The space I gained was filled with creativity. I noticed so much I hadn’t before – especially birdsong.”
THE GOOD LIFE
Once Rebecca has finished an illustration, Karl turns it into a digital image and prints it, before scoring and folding each card by hand. He then wraps the cards in wax paper, fastening each packet with a sticker. This tactile element is at the heart of the couple’s mission to inspire people to write to each other and go offline, at least for a while.
A couple of years ago, Rebecca and Karl had a daughter, Alba, and moved their business from their home in Cheltenham to a studio about 15 minutes away, between Colesbourne and Marsden. Now, Rebecca even finds inspiration on the drive to work. “There are times where I desperately want to pull in at the roadside to take photos of the changing colours of the trees,” she says.
The couple share childcare and make sure they take time to walk their dog on Leckhampton Hill, above Cheltenham, and explore the surrounding area. Keen to protect the environment, they only use card for their business that comes from sustainable forests, while sales of special-edition prints support the planting of wild-flower meadows through the charity Plantlife. The company is also carbon neutral and plants twice as many trees as it uses each year through a Woodland Trust scheme.
For Rebecca and Karl, a good life means having a low impact on the environment and celebrating simple pleasures, whether that’s enjoying the outdoors or sending a card to cheer someone up. As Rebecca says, “We want to help people do the small things that make us all feel so much better.”
“We want to help people do the small things that make us all feel so much better”