Background
From a small-town girl living in the big city, to living a quiet family life on the countryside, just trying to follow my dreams. This is my story, so far.
I grew up in a small town in the north of Sweden called Luleå, where I spent my first 16 years of life. Back then I was crazy about horses. It didn’t come as a surprise to anyone when I took my Icelandic horse named Lettir across the country, for a special high school program that focused on Icelandic horses. After three amazing years at school, we set our course to a little place called Olsbenning, where I worked training horses.
After that I wanted to see and travel the world, so Lettir moved to my good friend Nina and I jumped on a flight to Oslo for work. To save up to go traveling, working in Norway was the go-to for Swedes back then. After just a couple of weeks in Norway my friend decided that she didn’t want to stay in Oslo anymore and sadly she went home. I moved in with Maria, a friend of hers also from Luleå, and worked pretty much every day for a couple of months. Then I went home with all that money saved up and no one to travel with. What a bummer.
A few weeks later my good friend Anna called, and asked me if I wanted to come work with her in Narvik, Norway – and that’s were life happened. There I met the love of my life Fredrik, who was there taking a master’s degree in Satellite Engineering. He was from Oslo, and when I lived there, I lived in a flat just a few blocks away from his family home. Imagine that.
That being the beginning of my journey, I have now just celebrated a whole decade living in Norway. Today I live with my fiancé Fredrik, my children Noah and Nikki and our dog Izzy in a little place called Ytre Enebakk outside of Oslo.
Interests
For as long as I can remember I’ve always had a passion for photography. I have thousands and thousands of pictures saved, capturing everyday moments, traveling and events. I can spend hours editing pictures. I love to be creative and to search for inspiration of new things to try out. I also try to stay active and love the outdoors.
Being outside, clearing your mind, finding new energy. It helps a lot with the creativity.
Schooling
For the last couple of years my life has been all about my children. Even though I wouldn’t want to have it any other way I really missed me. As they are getting older, I have more time for me and I can really focus on my passions and career. I would love to have a job where I can be creative and use my business skills together. A place to grow and to learn as much as I can. I would be proud to call myself a Graphic Designer after this.
I have no prior schooling except for high school and a lot of years working in different businesses. With everything today being online and digitized I really want to be a part of it, and I’m so excited to expand my creative side, to learn more and to see where this could go.
I chose Noroff’s online school because of the freedom it gives me to combine my family life and studies.
Future
In the future I hope I can combine my graphic design career with my passion for photography. My dream is that after the end of this course, I will be able to work from anywhere in the world.
Self-portrait
This was a hard one. With no experience working with the adobe creative apps I’ve ended up with pen and paper. Drawing is not one of my talents either. I had a very clear picture in my head about what I wanted it to look like from the first time I read the Lesson Task. I have made many sketches, tried to paint and I’ve even tried making one in paint on my computer. So here it is. The painted one.
![](https://ericastaal.files.wordpress.com/2020/10/scan_20201017_1.jpg?w=889)
Thank god I’m in this program to get the tools that I need for all the things I have visualized in my head that needs to come out.