Creative Confessions: Love’s Greeting

Wings of Whimsy is my creative outlet. And I have learned the hard way I need to have one! Designing and crafting are not my only creative passions, I like to take pictures and I like to write. In fact I like to apply my creativity to everything I do, including work! I regard creativity as a highly positive trait.

Although I try my best to share some of my creative results with the world, I have to confess creativity is often a solitary process. With everything you see here on WoW, there are countless hours behind it, sometimes testing and grooming the ideas and products for weeks, or some times the intense day&night weekend-projects.

I often wish I could work with others more, but other times I need my time alone to create. When life is taking a toll on me, I need to balance it with more creativity. In short, this means that my social life ends up at the bottom of the list when things are busy… Not so different from everyone else, I suppose, but maybe difficult to understand how I can choose creating over social happenings… I hope other creative people are able to recognize this conundrum.

I have come to realize that most of the people I regard as friends are more than average creative! And some of them are truly artists and widely recognized for it too. 

So today I would like to share the works of two of them, who both have crossed my life path in mysterious ways!

A few days ago, I got a surprise package by snail-mail from my friend Ana i Zaragoza, Spain. She was an exchange student at the Volda University College a few years ago, at the same time as I was taking design classes to satisfy my creative cravings. We did not take any of the same courses, but we met through mutual friends. As with most of my friends, I’m unable to explain why we became friends, you may say “we clicked”, “we had chemistry”, “our hearts spoke to each other” or what other expressions one would use. Meeting a new friend bears a close resemblance to falling in love…. I believe in many ways it IS to fall in love, only not the romantic kind you would share with a lover, but another kind of love, just as strong, possibly even more pure.

What about the package, you are probably asking by now… yes let’s stay on track: the package! 

Ana’s surprise package included numerous hearts! I love hearts. I try to keep it a secret, but the people close to me know I have hearts everywhere. I love them even more than cherubs and roses… that should tell you how much I love hearts! Cookie-cutters, cupcake forms, little chocholate casings… a brand new heart-mug, I’m going to take that one to the office, where I’ll use it every single day! And for the girls: pictures Ana took when she was here, in frames she has embellished with handmade decorations. Even the box itself was a wonder, I’m still puzzled by how she was able to make it (not in the picture).

Maybe the most wondrous thing in the package was the little handmade figures she sent me:

Can you believe she made replicas of me and the girls wearing our rain gear?

This image is taken by my friend Martin, who is a wonderful photographer! His daytime job however, is as a professor at the top notch Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), so I know he is busy&beyond with his chemistry students, his family and his passion for learning. Still, he is one of the most productive photographers I know! He lives in Trondheim, about 8 hours away. Every time he drives by Volda, he stops by to meet up and have a photoshoot with the girls, and although I prefer being behind the camera, I sometimes end up in his pictures too.

You can see more of his pictures with us HERE.

This particular picture has been one of my long time favorites, and I’ve been using it as a profile picture around the Internet for a while. Ana’s figures are adding another dimension to the story, I actually have a hard time explaining how much it all means to me!

What I can say for sure is: I am now planning a 3D collage, with both the picture and the figures together! To me it all symbolizes the strength of friendship across time and space, and how strong the creative connections are sometimes!

To Ana and Martin: Thank you for sharing your talent and creativity with me and the girls! Thank you for being you! Thank you for being there even when I’m “only” creative and not social.

And to all my other friends: may these creative confessions illustrate an important point: I love you all! My life is too busy, almost crazy at times, and I need to be creative to stay sane. It does not mean I love you less, or think of you less, or wish we could not spend more time together, it just means my core is creative, and sometimes that’s all there is room for.

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