Baby search finds joy in creating cards

Have you ever written a series of cards or letters to one person over the course of a year and found you got nothing in return? You kept on trying and trying but you didn’t receive even one reply. Then, suddenly you got creative and a card appeared in the post one year after your original card. 

 

Laura Lonsdale experienced a similar situation when it came for trying for a baby. Having worked previously as a marketing manager she endured six rounds of IVF with her husband in the UK and Greece. This determination for a baby had a long term effect on her mental health. 

 

Eventually she became pregnant and had a baby girl named Penelope in July 2019. Unfortunately Laura lost her job to redundancy nine weeks into her first trimester. 

 

She began looking at alternatives. Her husband at the time was an IT manager at Ribby Hall Village and was furloughed due to the pandemic. Laura took decisive steps to capitalize on her experience with IVF and transform the situation into a positive outcome.

 

‘Thortful’ an independent designers platform for greeting cards, advertised for new creators to come forward. Laura responded by designing five cards to support people going through IVF and immediately sent them off. 

 

Thankfully they were approved and a year later she achieved 2,000 sales on the popular site, with over 700 sales coming in the last month alone!

 

Laura expressed her joy at being commissioned to create the cards, 

 

“It’s a really positive thing to come out of a series of negative events. If I hadn’t struggled with IVF I wouldn’t be so passionate about it now. If lockdown didn’t happen there’s no way we’d have the time to do this”. 

 

Laura’s creative inspirations are derived from a variety of sources, from light bulb moments in the middle of the night, to family and friends pitching cards they would purchase themselves.

 

Only one card was sold in the first month yet now her business is going from strength to strength. 

 

^Alex Ashworth CCG Art Blogger