Czech architect ditches office grind to make her own unique pop-up cards

If Hong Kong's working hours weren't so long and inflexible, Tereza Hradilkova would still be working as an architect. But the 31-year-old Czech found it impossible to maintain a balance between work and family, with a young son to raise.

"After working for a few months, I decided I couldn't do it long term," she says. "The hours were awful. Basically, I had nothing to do in the morning and in the afternoon I was told what I had to do for the next day and then had to work late. I just could not accept it. It was totally incompatible with having a family."

So she quit her job and turned her talents to creating exquisite pop-up greeting cards, many of them featuring Hong Kong scenes, through a venture called Porigami.

"When I realised that I couldn't work here as an architect, I had to think about what to do. So I decided to try to turn my hobby into my job," she says.

Her hobby is working with paper - drawing on the material, cutting it and experimenting with printing, using techniques that she picked up in Japan.

Hradilkova grew up and trained in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, but spent two years in Tokyo when her husband, a French teacher, took a job there in 2007. Their son, Tigran, was born a year later and she took some time off to raise him before the family moved to Hong Kong three years ago.