After a few years working on her card label, Eloise Lark Cards, Tasmanian illustrator Eloise Cook is ready to show her designs off to the wholesale market at Life Instyle Sydney.
Cook has been making cards for her parents since she was a child, but it wasn’t until she decided to sell her creations at local markets that she realised the power her cards had.
“I never thought about them as a serious product because I was searching for something bigger and better,” she says. “But the more markets and pop up shops I did, the more I started to realise that I had it all here.
“I underestimated the power of making people smile (as cheesy as that sounds) and that’s essentially why I decided to go with it.”
Unlike many on the market, Eloise Lark cards aren’t generally occasion-based. Instead, they exist purely to make people smile says Cook. Her designs are humorous and encourage people to take life a bit less seriously.
As the woman behind the brand, Cook says it can be daunting putting her cards out into the world. “The biggest challenge so far has been having enough self-belief to keep at it, trusting my intuition and exposing my work publicly,” she says. “It can feel like opening up your personal dairy and watching people read through it.”
However, showing her work publicly is exactly what Cook will be doing this February at Life Instyle. She decided to take the plunge after spending a few years working on refining the product, and says showing at a fair is the natural next step.
She is also eager to expand the range, including a new Christmas collection, and grow her relationships with stockists, but she’s also happy to let things happen naturally.
“Goals are great, and I definitely have a few, but I also like to keep things open for whatever opportunities may arise.”
By Ruth Cooper
