A Q&A with Lindsy Liu, Founder of Happy Little Paper Co.
by E.Y. Hwang
After burning out as a poison information specialist during the pandemic, Lindsy Liu rediscovered her childhood love of drawing. A move to Baltimore’s thriving art community sparked Happy Little Paper Company, now an award-winning paper goods business celebrating Asian culture through designs featuring rice cookers, fish sauce bottles, and sticky rice baskets.
Liu has found success with products that feel like home to customers seeking cultural representation. Liu spoke with us about her journey from healthcare to entrepreneurship, honoring her multicultural roots, and building a business that fits her life.
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Please tell us a little about yourself. Where did you grow up? What did you study in school?
My dad was a teenage immigrant from Laos, and like it was straight out of a Hallmark movie, he met my mom at a Dairy Queen in a tiny southern town. The story goes that they fell in love when she made him an ice cream. I spent my childhood immersed in a small bubble of a multicultural community in Oklahoma drinking sweet tea with my grandma and eating sticky rice with my uncles.
A few decades later I attended Howard University College of Pharmacy, an incredible HBCU, and then completed a hospital pharmacy residency at Howard University Hospital. After I finished my hospital residency, I worked for five years as a certified specialist in poison information at an emergency medicine nonprofit in Washington DC.
You are a self-taught graphic designer and illustrator. Have you always been interested in art and design?
I’ve always loved art and drawing. My love of art has always been a little casual and a little silly. I remember afternoons sprawled on the living room floor coloring with my parents, my mom always carried paper and pen for me to doodle with, and my school notes had margins full of tiny illustrations. Sometimes, when I couldn’t find paper, I would draw on my arms with gel pens! I had a fun phase of giving myself full sleeves of doodles in bright, sparkly ink, which I’m sure my parents loved.
How did the idea for Happy Little Paper Company come about?
I had largely given up drawing during school and while I pursued my career as a pharmacist, there just wasn’t time for it. Even the margins of my notes were empty of doodles.
When I was working as a poison information specialist, the job was all I had energy or time for. I feel like anyone working at a nonprofit or in healthcare might relate to that. The work is so incredibly important and it becomes easy to push everything else aside. The full weight of it all finally caught up with me during the pandemic and I experienced extreme burnout.
I was drained emotionally, mentally, and physically and I knew I had to make a change. I was extremely lucky to find a new job that gave me a healthier work life balance while still serving the public.
During my newfound free time I picked up my pencils again. Around the same time I moved to Baltimore, Maryland which has a thriving art community. I started participating in local art markets, happily made friends with shared artistic interests, and over time Happy Little Paper Co was born. I think it honestly was just an extremely fortunate coincidence that all of this happened around the same time. If I had not been lucky enough to land in this wonderful and supportive community I don’t think I would have grown so much as an artist, as a person, and as a small business owner.
Can you walk our readers through your creative process, from idea to finished piece?
I think allowing yourself to play and be creative is incredibly important not only for children but also for adults. We all deserve the opportunity to be silly and try new things without the weight of productivity and perfection hanging over our heads.
I’ve had so many conversations with people saying that they wish they could draw and my answer is always the same: Do it! Pick up a pencil and have fun. It doesn’t have to be perfect, no one is going to judge you, and the more you do it, the easier it gets. I do my best to keep the theme of low stakes playfulness in my process. I have a running list of ideas and prompts that I keep in my phone. If I think of something funny or see something inspiring I add it to that list to reference later when I’m drawing.
I also keep a sketchbook that I call my “ugly sketchbook.” I don’t show it to anyone and I try not to be too precious about what goes into it. I only use black pen in it and I will limit myself to using only 1-2 types of pens. Removing the stress of trying to pick out which supplies to use helps me focus on drawing freely and knowing that I won’t share the drawings with anyone removes the fear of future critiques. This method has really helped me overcome art block. If I create a sketch I really like, I will transfer it to my iPad and finish it digitally in Procreate. Every illustration currently in my product line has been made this way.
Since I have a traditional 9-5, being able to draw on the go with my iPad has been really beneficial for me but I do miss working traditionally. I love using watercolors, gouache, and color pencils. My goal for 2026 is to incorporate more traditional materials into my art process. But I think it’s really important to acknowledge that you don’t have to have fancy art supplies to make art. Some of my favorite drawings were made with old, leaky ballpoint pens on scraps of receipt paper!
Your designs are all fantastic, especially those that feel Asian-specific like the rice cooker and Tiger Balm ones. What inspired those, and how did you decide to include them? Did you ever worry they might be too niche?
When my business was brand new and I was still finding my brand and illustrative voice, I worried a lot that my designs wouldn’t be appealing or that I was too niche. I wondered how many people would know that this sticker was of fish sauce? Would anyone recognize my sticky rice basket? I also worried, as someone who is mixed race, that people would think I was culturally appropriating these designs. But it was incredibly important to me that I make them.
I wanted to create work that reconnected me to the childhood and culture I thought I had lost over the years. These designs were created to honor where I came from and it’s also become a love letter to likeminded people.
I want to create work that speaks to our shared experiences and pays homage to Asian culture so I started with the designs that I felt were most universal, our incredible food! I wanted my brand to feel like coming home, to feel like walking in the front door, taking off your shoes, and having family and friends ask, “Have you eaten yet? Are you hungry?” I’ve had so many amazing conversations with customers over these designs. I’ve found so many people with multicultural backgrounds like mine and finding connections like that has been absolutely priceless. Especially these days, I want us to have pride in our culture and we deserve to see ourselves reflected in art and design. We deserve to be celebrated!
What has been the most challenging aspect of starting Happy Little Paper Company? The most rewarding?
The most challenging aspect of starting Happy Little Paper Co has been fighting doubt. Is it silly for me to spend my time and resources doing this? Is it fair for me to ask my partner and my family to give up their free time to help me? Is it appropriate for me, as a person with a mixed race background, to make these designs or claim this space? The doubt and imposter syndrome can loom large at times but the outcomes have been so rewarding.
I have found an immense joy in allowing myself to be creative. I have been welcomed into the most incredible community of artists and friends through doing this work. Sharing this journey with my partner and my family has been so profoundly special and it has helped me feel more confident in claiming space in my Asian heritage and reconnecting with my culture.
I was lucky enough to have one of my designs win the Louie Award for the category Celebrating AAPI Culture. The Louie Awards are an awards program hosted by the Greeting Card Association that recognizes the best card makers and card designs in the greeting card industry.
I was also awarded the Maker of Note award for Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders! It has been such an honor to have my designs celebrated by my peers.
In addition to designing for and running Happy Little Paper Company, you also have a full-time job. How do you balance everything without burning out?
In all honesty, I’m not great at balancing my time, but I am certainly working on it! I’m really fortunate to be part of a support group of small business owners that meets weekly. They help keep me accountable not only to my business goals but also to my personal goals. They’ve been an invaluable resource and I’m incredibly grateful to have a group like this to share the trials and tribulations of being a small business owner. I also have a very supportive family and a great partner. They step in to help me whenever I need it and they have been my biggest cheerleaders! It’s easy to get carried away with the excitement of designing a new product or signing up for a million art shows. Over the last few years of running my business I’ve learned to lean on my community when I need help and I try to remind myself that slow, steady, and healthy growth in my business is the goal. I’m slowly learning that the key to keeping myself from burning out is to build my business in a way that fits my life rather than trying to fit my life around my business.
What advice do you wish you had before starting your business?
Done is better than perfect! I’m a diehard perfectionist and I think that held me back for a long time. So much of starting and running my business has been me taking leaps of faith and hoping I land well. There has been a lot of trial and error, testing and learning, and slowly finding processes that work for me. I could have waited a few more years and asked a million people a million questions about starting a small business and I still wouldn’t have been able to dodge every stumbling block I’ve met along the way. I’m so glad I didn’t wait until everything was perfect.
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Edited for clarity.
Images provided by Lindsy Liu