I’m so happy at the moment. I got my first products into my hands on Thursday, two postcards for Valentine’s day. That is an enormous thing for me. I have dreamed of my own business for a long time. At the end of 2019, I decided to take action and make my dream come true. I started my own small Viivi Laakkonen company and became an entrepreneur.
I have had the idea of becoming an entrepreneur for many years. However, the idea of what my company would do has changed several times. Even now, I have a few ideas of which I will focus one at a time, and see where the journey takes me. First, I’m going to focus on illustration and postcards and posters.
I set myself a deadline and wanted to make my first products for Valentine’s day. In the first card “You make my heart do forward rolls” I tried to capture that feeling when you see your favourite person or meet someone who just makes your heart to beat a bit faster, or do forward rolls.
The other card is for friendship. In Finland, Valentine’s day is called ystävänpäivä, friend’s day. It’s time to celebrate friendship. When designing this card, I used lyrics by Spice Girls: friendship never ends, as inspiration. However, I wanted to find my edge to the sentence. That, in the end, came out as a wordplay: FriendSHIP never sinks. It’s like, you and your friend build a friendship and you are that ship together. True friendship never sinks, it keeps sailing both in calm and stormy weather.
It’s hard to believe this is really happening. Am I really holding my first products? It feels so good but also unreal at the same time. Now it’s time to clap me on the shoulder, “you did it”, and just keep pushing! This is just the beginning. I’m that kind of person who needs to start doing to get things done. By that I mean, that otherwise I could wait for the right moment and plan forever before really doing anything. Stop thinking, start doing!
I will soon finish my online store so that it will be easier to buy my products. If you are interested in buying my first postcards or if you would like to sell my products in your store, please send me an email, viivilaakkonen@gmail.com.
Please feel free to leave any comment! What do you think about my first cards, what kind of postcards/posters you would like to buy, where you would like to see/buy my products?
To see more my design, follow @viivilaakkonenofficial on Instagram and visit my portfolio.
VIIVI