Olena Svingeseth: England, Norway and starting a business

Recently I put a message out to followers on my Travel Instagram Account asking if anyone wanted to share their own stories and to my surprise one of my closest friends from Sixth Form reached out. I wanted to interview them years ago but so much has happened since then that I thought this would be a great opportunity, we talk about moving country, adapting and also starting a business! I hope you enjoy reading it!

Who are you and where are you from?

Hi! My name is Olena Svingeseth, I’m 32, I am from Northampton but moved in and out of the country a couple of times, as well as around the county a couple of times. I met Lewis when I was 16 and we were both in the same form group and English classes at 6th form. I still think it’s a bit mad that we have known each other for over half of our lives now!     

What is your family background?

My mother is from a tiny village in Poland, and my dad has Ukrainian roots. I grew up in Northampton though, living with my parents and older brother until I moved out for the first time, around age 18\19. I have been with my Norwegian husband for over 10 years already (married for 4) and we have 2 amazing little trolls called Odin and Theodore, who are 5 + 1/2 years old.

How in touch with your birth country did you feel growing up?

It’s strange actually, I never really felt like I belonged in Northampton or England in general growing up, I always felt out of place and unsettled. I lived in Neu-Isenberg in Germany, a small village outside of Cambridge called Histon, the town centre in Northampton. I have moved 12 times in the last 14 years, and I only just started to feel settled since moving to Norway in December 2020. The only real attachment I have to Northampton since growing up there is my family and a few friends, they all mean the world to me and I miss them a lot.

Did you ever miss anything about Poland growing up?

As a child, my parents used to take me and my brother to Poland in the summer holidays normally for the whole 6 weeks and it was some of the best memories I have. I played with my cousins who were mostly around the same age as me, helped out on my grandma’s farm, getting into mischief, visiting the woods for picnics and eating delicious, wholesome food. I haven’t been there for a long time now.

I think the last time I visited was when I was about 15\16. After my Babcia (Polish for Grandmother) passed away I felt like it would be difficult to visit, as she was such a cornerstone of the family. My uncle inherited her house after she passed, and I think it kind of changed my perception of the place, knowing that it would be completely different to go back. I want to visit with my husband and kids at some point but it’s just trying to find the time\money that is an issue!

Are you still in touch with this part of your life, is there anything you’ve tried to keep doing or pass down to your own children?

I have tried to keep a lot of the same values that I learnt from Poland and my family. A very close family, spending time together, eating good food and making silly memories though I suppose this is not exactly just a culture thing. I speak with some of my cousins who now have kids of their own, and I have a wonderful Aunt who visits when she can, often at the same time that my mother visits us. I always want my kids to know how important family is, and that’s also one of the deciding factors of why we moved to Norway a few years ago.

Meeting your partner

I believe you met your husband in an online game, I think this has become more and more common these days but what game did you initially meet in and how did you start a relationship through meeting online?

Haha it really is more common nowadays! We met playing Guild Wars 2. I created a guild with another friend who I met online and as we were recruiting players into said Guild, I invited a few people and started chatting with them. One of the new players asked if his brother could join too (My husband) and if we were able to send him an invite, which of course we were happy to do so. We all started chatting casually, had a Facebook group and everything to continue discussions outside of the game with all the guild members. I remember it was soon after his 19th birthday that I really started to talk to him. We would message each other all the time, then we started playing other Co-op games together on Steam like Portal 2 and Saints Row 3. As cheesy as it sounds, I started to have feelings for him before we had even met and it’s even stranger to say that I missed him even though I had never met him but the feeling was mutual for both of us.

I decided that I was going to visit him in Norway so I booked tickets to visit him for a week in September, much to the terror of my parents who didn’t think it was safe to fly to a new country to meet someone from the internet. There’s plenty of horror stories about this kind of interaction going wrong, but I was confident that he wasn’t going to kill me, haha, letting my parents speak to him on facetime, giving them addresses etc as reassurance. By the time I got back after my week with him I booked one-way flights back to Norway for the end of November or December, I can’t remember when exactly. The rest as they say is history!

In a world where people meet online or tend to use dating apps to meet their long term partner (as is the case with me) do you feel there is still a stigma?

Given how much our society is now so dependent on technology and social media, I think the stigma has definitely diminished over the years. It was over 10 years ago now that we met, and while it was still a bit frowned upon even then it’s so much more common now, as you said yourself that’s how you met your own partner. I have other friends who met their partners through apps like Tinder, as much as it gets a bad rep it’s still designed to match people together, and my friends have all had positive experiences from it.

How did you navigate this relationship to eventually live together?

After spending a week with Martin I knew that going home was going to be heart breaking. It wasn’t long after I arrived back in Northampton that I was pretty much planning to move there. Like I said in my earlier answer, I never felt attached to Northampton itself anyway and wanted to explore more of what the world was like, so we decided I would move to Norway instead of the other way around. He was living in a tiny, rustic little cabin at the time (fun fact, it’s actually one of the cabins used for participants of the Olympics that was held in Lillehammer, Norway in 1994) so it was a perfect start up place for us.

As you both met through gaming would you say that is still a big part of your life?

For my husband more so than me, recently I’ve gotten back into reading books as a hobby again which takes up a lot of time. I still play games sure, but as a mainly PC player with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome it was hard to play for extended lengths of time, and now that I am recovering from surgery on both hands it’s something I want to sink some more time into.

I have a Patch magazine subscription which keeps me updated on my kinda gaming which is more indie/wholesome vibes so this is a great way to pick and choose what games I want to play. I love Stardew Valley, sinking hundreds of hours into it on PC, Playstation, Switch and iPad. Slime Rancher 1 and 2 are favourites as well as Coral Island, No Man’s Sky, House Flipper, Dave the Diver. I love playing things like Deep Rock Galactic with my husband and his sister too.

I recently finished Caravan Sandwitch which was such a beautifully atmospheric game, with some interesting puzzle mechanics and characters that I would recommend giving it a go, I completed everything in about 10 hours but I thoroughly enjoyed the whole thing.

Would you say you still game together or is it a more solitary thing for you? Do you have an recommendations for couples?

Most of the time we play separately, with my husband playing games like Rocket League, Minecraft and Path of Exile 2 to name just a few. I prefer solitary indie games, but we do enjoy playing things together like Stardew Valley, Dinkum, Pathless Woods and Deep Rock Galactic. If chilled gaming is more of your cup of tea I would definitely recommend any of those games. At the moment we don’t really have any games on the go together but we are playing Little Big Planet 3 together and showing our kids how much fun it is. We’re trying to raise little gamers you see!

Norway and raising children

I’d like to move on to your time in Norway now when did you first move there and why?

I first moved to Norway in the end of 2014 after me and my husband had just got together. I knew a long distance relationship would be really hard for both of us, we had such a connection since the start, as I said before we missed each other before we had even met so missing each other after we met was painful to say the least. After lots of discussions about it we decided I would move to Norway to live with him, try and find a job and just generally spend time together. He flew to England to spend 2 weeks with me and get to know my parents and sort of put their minds at ease that I was moving for the right guy. We flew back to Norway together after his 2 weeks in England.

What made your and your Husband wish to then move to the UK?

Moving to Norway was kind of like a double edged sword for me. I loved the country, beautiful landscapes and views of forests, the sea and mountains from our little cabin, I used a feminine touch to make the cabin more cosy and I still miss that little place sometimes. It was really hard on me though, living so out ‘in the sticks’ where I had to rely on Martin to take me anywhere as buses didn’t even go past where we lived. We had a beautiful Norwegian Forest kitten called Korin, and we only had him for about 6 months when he didn’t come back inside for a few days, was very clearly injured from either an attack or a fall and he died very soon after that, it was a tough time for both of us, he died the morning that we were leaving to the airport for a visit to England in May 2015.

Martin’s mother found us some kittens to adopt while we were still visiting in England because we knew our tiny cabin needed some life in it, so this is when we adopted Link and Monty, little sisters. I fell into depression after a few months, missing friends and family and a more normal social life. I had struggled to find a job too for lack of a driver’s license. We decided that it would be much easier to learn to drive in England, so I booked an intensive driving course which meant all my lessons were done in about 2 weeks, with my test at the end of it. At the time that I booked it, I had plans to go back to Norway shortly after. Many discussions later and trying to think of the best place to create our lives together we decided we would try it in England. It was more of a ‘f$%£ it let’s do it’ decision, but we wanted to give it a try anyway.

I stayed after passing my test and went job hunting, found a job at a care home and trained for that while Martin was prepping to move to England. He moved with our kittens in tow around April 2016. We lived with my parents and brother in my childhood home until we were able to buy our own house together, which we got the keys for around May 2017 I believe.

While being back in the UK did you miss Norway?

I actually begun to miss the quiteness of where we had lived in Norway despite how depressed it originally made me. I think because I wasn’t long past my days of going drinking with friends and socialising with them that I missed that kind of atmosphere but now as a 32 year old the idea of socialising in that way gives me the ick. It’s so strange how your perception can change in just a few short months. Every time we went to visit Martin’s family I missed the fresh air, the snow capped mountains on every horizon line and the more slow paced life. Obviously there was busy shopping centres still and everyone had work life but it’s much less demanding in Norway. I had really bad anxiety in Northampton when we moved back because we lived in such a dodgy area, I was so worried about something happening that there was a time where I couldn’t even be in the house by myself for that fear. It all just made me miss Norway that much more.

While being back in England you had twin boys, what was the experience like raising twin infants in the UK , was this a factor in moving back again to Norway?

So I fell pregnant in November 2018 but it wasn’t until the first scan that we found out I was carrying twins. We both when from crying to laughing for many weeks afterwards. Nothing can prepare you for that shock. We were already nervous enough about having a child so to find out that our first pregnancy would yield 2 children was nothing short of wild. I was bed\sofa bound during the last 3 months of my pregnancy because I could only stand up for 5 minutes before the circulation to my legs was being cut off from my MASSIVE belly. I’m not even kidding, a work colleague said I looked like a hot air balloon.

My waters broke on 10th of June, so we rushed and waddled to hopsital where my second waters broke and we knew it was time. I gave birth to my beautiful sons Odin and Thedore, but as they were only at 35 weeks gestation they were premature, and Theo had to stay in NICU for a few days because he had some trouble with his airways. We stayed in hopsital for 7 days until the 3 of us were cleared to go, and so began the terrifying and exhasuting job of caring for 2 newborns. It was the hardest time of my life, the first few week I somehow made it through on no word of a lie, about 10 hours of sleep for the whole week.

The more that we ventured out with the boys on walks in their buggy, going shopping and just the general atmosphere in Northampton we were thinking it wasn’t a good place for us and for them. And then Covid hit. I had just started taking the boys to a twin group that was luckily held at the school near where we lived so just a few minutes walk to get there, so that socialisation for the 3 of us had then vanished. I had to quit my job because to afford childcare just for me to go to work would eat up my entire wages and then some. I had no choice in the matter, which was incredibly hard as I actually enjoyed my job and could have seen myself furthering my career there. We had already discussed the idea of moving back when the boys were a few months old, but we pretty much cemented our plan at the beginning of 2020 to move by the end of the year.

When did you move back and where do you now reside?

So we moved back to Norway on the 11th of December 2020, meaning we actually stuck to our plan of moving before the end of the year. Covid was still lurking around which meant that travelling with two 1.5 year olds was nothing short of nightmarish. I almost wasn’t able to move, until I could provide proof that me and Martin were actually married as I didn’t have time to change my passport during the whole moving process because it meant that we had to sell our house at the same time. Honestly, I will never move country again because it was the most exhausting and emotionally draining task ever; trying to raise 2 infants, while selling a house and organising shipping of all our belongings and furniture to all co-inside  with us getting one way flights. It gives me the heebie-jeebies just remembering it all. Also all of our luggage was lost on the plane, which included our car seats for the boys, all of their clothing so about 6 suitcases in total.

We moved into an apartment under Martin’s Grandparents house and luckily his family prepped everything on their end for us so we had most of our furniture set up and ready for us to settle into. It was never a permanent solution to live there but it was just what we needed to get us started. We had help from the community (we call it Kommune here) to secure a bank loan while we looked for a house for us, until we found our perfectly janky yellow house in an area close to the boys’ nursery and school. We have now lived in our house since April 2023, it still needs work here and there but it’s such a great size for the kids to make the most of it. We have a big garden and an old barn that we might do something with at some point, if we ever have time or money for such a big project.

I can imagine raising twins is hard, do you feel Norway has good benefits and infrastructure to raise children?

Oh you have no idea! Even raising one child is hard, two is just crazy. The schooling systems in general here are more beneficial and also one of the reasons while we wanted to move. The cost of childcare was less than half the expense it would have been in England, and it has just recently been decreased even more, with the cap being about 1,500kr per child per month. This is equivalent to about £110 per child, including meals. We get a bit of a discount because our kids are twins too.

There is much better structure in place regarding schools, no uniform, a more gradual integration into a learning environment and higher education is free. Our kids will start school when they are 6, so in August this year which feels kind of crazy to be saying now. I know in England that kids start school when they are 4 which for me seems totally crazy now. I can barely get my boys to sit still for 3 minutes let alone for hours in classrooms.

It’s a much more relaxed integration and the only expectations of school starters is to be able to dress themselves and take care of themselves in the toilet. That’s it! If we had been in England, I think my boys would have struggled in school, being premature they were always a little behind on important developmental milestones, with Odin only starting to talk when he was over 2.5 years old. They have already visited their new school a few times and met with the rest of their soon to be class from another pre-school which is such a great opportunity. They will visit for integration days a few more times before they officially start in August, to meet their teachers and get used to the place and lesson structures.

Do you feel you’ve been able to integrate into Norwegian culture well? Were there any struggles for you initially?

The general culture here is not that much different than in England. It is a lot more laidback though, even for interviews you wouldn’t expect someone to come in a suit or office attire, just jeans and a nice shirt is more than acceptable. This was a bit strange for me at the beginning. The work week is usually about 40 hours, with not as much emphasis on overtime over here, only more for manufacturing jobs and the like. Also on that note, most places of business have summer off work. Instead of taking out holiday as you freely would in England like I was used to, my current job gives me 4 consecutive weeks holiday in the summer. We have a bit of time of for Easter, Norway’s Constitution day (17th of May) and Christmas too. It fits in so much better now that I have kids who will be off from school during summer break. I can’t imagine how it would have worked had we still been at our old jobs in England.

Expanding on the Consitution Day, the 17th of May celebrations are probably the largest of the year. Nurseries and schools take part in parades walking around their local area, with each class usually holding a banner and following a procession of marching band. The largest parades are in Oslo and other major cities. The day is then spent eating hot dogs, waffles, ice cream and playing outdoor activities. Most people dress in traditional Norwegian attire called Bunad. It’s beautifully embroidered wool clothing, with folk patterns across the dresses and white shirts with intricate collars. There is a version for men too, sporting knee high wool socks, bunadsko (bunad shoes) and long wool shorts that meet the socks at the knee.

They are so beautiful, and I have always been fascinated by them. There are different styles of Bunad depending on the region where people are from, so they are similar but each area has a distinct style or colour with slight variations. They are incredibly expensive, and for each set including silver jewellery it can be about 40,000kr, sometimes even more depending on the craftsmanship of each piece and style. They are often worn as formal clothing, at weddings, christenings, funerals, and 17th of May. Martin and I each have a Bunad but a more widely available and cheaper option and it’s so nice to wear on occasions.

One of the things I struggled with most since moving is the extreme weather. We think it’s bad in England with the rain, but when it rains here IT RAINS. And usually sideways haha. We live on the mid-western edge of Norway and we always have lots of rain, in summer and in winter. We recently had a lot of snow, about 1m of it and digging out cars is no fun. Of course it is beautiful when you’re inside, by the fire and don’t need to go anywhere, the kids love sledding etc but as a driver, no thanks!

The ‘endless summer’ as we call it is between May – July when the sun literally doesn’t set. It is the same brightness as an overcast day at 1am and it’s the most confusing thing ever. A lot of people sleep less during this time, because it’s hard to go to bed when you look outside and it’s not even dark. This took a while to get used to, and I don’t think I will ever 100% get used to it in all honesty. It’s just bizarre. It’s also a pain at the kids’ bedtime when they say ‘but it’s not even dark yet’ as for them that’s their only indication of when to actually go to bed. On the flip side of this, winter is hard. You wake up and go to work, it’s dark. You finish work, it’s dark. By the Solstice we had about 5 hours of daylight, even less so when it’s raining. It makes you more tired and makes you wish you could hibernate during the dark months!

Have you begun learning the language?

Ja! It is hard for me, as with a lot of Germanic/European languages they use masculine/feminine/neutral which is hard to get your head around in the beginning as we don’t use that same system in the English language. There are a lot of hilarious compound words though, for example, a Hedgehog is Pinnsvin that literally translates to ‘pin pig’. I have been using DuoLingo app which has been a great help. During conversations sometimes I’ll pick up on a word, not sure of what it means but then use google translate to see what it is and it makes the whole conversation make more sense as a result. I’ve picked up a lot from work and from Martin conversing with family, I just need to work on my confidence when speaking it. I speak Norwegian at shops and things like that, as my Norwegian is very basic but I can ususally muddle through and work out the context of what people are saying based on what I already know.

On the flip side the boys are amazing with their Norwegian. We thought it would be a tough transition for them to go from English speaking at home to only speaking Norwegian in nursery, but they picked it up quickly amongst their friends, teachers and family. They can switch so easily from English to Norwegian with grandparents and great-grandparents. They really are like little sponges at that age.

What is something that stands out about Norway to you?

The sheer amount of outdoor hobbies! There is a saying that Norwegians are born on skis and that’s basically true. A lot of people visit local mountains for downhill skiing or snowboarding, or there is cross country skiing too that is more relaxed. I haven’t tried either because I am clumsy and I already have problems with my hands and knees, so I might try it in a few years after they have improved. A lot of people also go fishing, hiking, wild swimming (yes even in December), mountain trekking and cycling to name a few.

Another stand out thing is that it’s a much more casual place, a lot of people wear sports gear/trekking trousers as normal everyday wear, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone in a suit that wasn’t going to some sort of celebration. In the 4 years that I have lived here now I have seen a Police car with sirens going once. ONCE. I would see them multiple times a day in England. It feels like a much safer place here, and I felt that way since I first lived here in 2014-2016, which was also a deciding factor of our move, being able to feel safe in our home and area.

Is there anything that surprised you about Norway?

Before I moved it was the sheer cost of everything. When I first visited Norway it cost me about £12 for a coffee and a panini at the airport which was almost 10% of my spending budget at the time! Coming over from £’s is a shock, but after earning money here and earning more it kind of balances out. I mean, shrinkflation is definitely happening but that can be said of everywhere at the moment really. It took me a while to stop thinking about consumer goods in £s and switching to kroner, but once I did it didn’t seem as bad.

One of the things that I found amazing about Norway and where we live in particular is how different the houses are. I used to live in an ex-council house in England, where rows and rows of houses were just carbon copies of each other. Here, almost no houses are the same. The way they are dotted around up the hills and the different styles, shapes, colours has always been amazing to me. The first day that I arrived my head was basically stuck to the car window, admiring how different they all are. Here, a lot of the time families have built their own house. The previous owner of our house was the one who built it from scratch, and kept adding to it as time went on. Some people prefer to have balconies, others large decking, lots of farm building too. Red is a traditional colour of houses but they range from yellow like our house to blue, greys, greens and everything in between. It’s honestly so refreshing!

Would you recommend Norway as a destination to visit?

100%. We live in a Kommune called Vestnes, in the Møre og Romsal region. Ålesund is a beautiful seascape city close to us, about an hour drive away. There is a famous road and attraction called Trollstigen a few hours away from us. You drive up the winding mountainside road and can park at the top to look out over the mountain at special viewing platforms. I’ve been there a few times now but never tire of the view. We drive past Gieranger, another famous Fjord and the Seven Sisters Waterfall. Both stunning. I would love to go on a cruise through the fjords but that is quite pricey. There’s plenty of things to do that don’t cost a lot, as long as you don’t mind trekking! Cabins are dotted around everywhere and they can be rented for a small amount of money.

The views everywhere are just stunning. Coming from Northampton where we barely even had any small hills it was just jaw-droppingly gorgeous, especially on a warm September day with the blue skies, sun glinting off of the fjord. Pictures don’t really do any justice to it though, it really is something that has to be seen. Also, stepping outside of our house to see the Northern Lights is nothing short of wonderful.

How was the experience of finding work in Norway for you?

It’s difficult. Most places favour degrees, obviously, and a lot of industries require very specialised ones at that. One of my brother in laws has a degree in Mechanical Engineering and immediately got a job within the Ship building industry which was fantastic. I struggled for a while, until a work friend of Martin’s said that he knew someone looking for staff for cleaning or catering. I went to meet with him and he’s now my boss, and I work at a cantine for one of the biggest shipyard businesses around. Sometimes it’s not what you know, but who you know! A lot of times here people get work through connections, as there a many more small and family owned businesses here. I have been working since March ’23 but I have been off sick for almost a year now due to carpal tunnel syndrome. I had operations in both of my hands and I’m hoping to be back at work in about a month or so, I’ve really missed the routine!

Going back to your sons, do you feel they are in touch with your own culture much or moreso Norwegian culture?

They are growing up with a big old mix of cultures. They speak English at home and with me and Martin, but they speak Norwegian with our family here and at nursery. It’s amazing seeing them switch between the two so easily and I’m so proud of the progress they have made this year. They have already experienced a fair amount of Norwegian culture, with the 17th of May celebrations (we call it syttendemai) and explaining about Bunads to them. They also learn about the love and warmth of their eastern European cultures from their Baba (my mother).

How has the experience of raising twins been overall, as a father of one I can’t imagine two at once?

It’s been a wild ride. The newborn stage was so taxing, and my mental health was appalling after I gave birth. Only recently things have become a little bit easier, with the boys playing with each other and wanting more independence. Nights were always the hardest, especially when they were so small and even more so when they had growth spurts, we were feeding them every two hours at some points and when they were out of sync on their feeds it was even worse.

Each new developmental milestone was chaotic, just when we were getting into routines and getting used to certain things it would all just go haywire. Most of it kind of settled down after potty training (don’t even get me started on what that was like) apart from tantrums, obviously, but that’s unavoidable. When we first found out that I was carrying twins at my 12 week scan we were just completely shocked, but now I wouldn’t have it any other way. For a long time my mother and I felt that it was weird to see a buggy with just one baby! It became so normal to us, and the bond that they have is magical. Of course they fight and argue, but watching them invent silly games and playing together is just amazing. They always have each other, and it also gives me time to drink a coffee while it is still hot because they will normally be busy playing together.

Are there any misconceptions about twins that you’d like to address?

For me the main misconception is that they are identical. I do not have identical twins, they are fraternal which means they are no different than if they were born 2 or 3 years apart, my body just decided to release an extra egg for a laugh. My grandmother before me had twins who were also fraternal, and because she had twins it meant that it was more likely for her daughters and their daughters to have twins too. If I was to get pregnant again, I am 4 times more likely to have twins again…OR MORE. So the twin gene is only on the maternal side of the family. Fraternal twins are much more common, with about 2/3 of twin births being fraternal and only about 1/3 being identical.

The first born, Odin has darker hair and is a few cm shorter than the youngest twin, Theodore who has more blonde colouring in his hair and has always been a bit bigger, ever since they were in the womb together.

If you ever know anyone that has or is expecting twins, please help them out in what ever way you can because it is HARD. I remember one time when I went shopping with the boys by myself, when they were under 1 year old, a stranger came up to me and told me that I was doing a great job with them and that I should be proud of being a twin mum and I almost burst into tears in Tesco. It is draining in every way imaginable so hearing that from someone, even a stranger made me feel loads better.

Also, don’t ask which twin is the naughty one and which is the nice one, like some strangers for some reason felt compelled to do. Never ask that. It was only after the interaction that I came up with a witty reply to put them in their place. Just don’t be that person!

Building a business

You recently started a business could you explain what this business is and why you decided to take that plunge?

So we are called Cosmic Prints. We are a small 3D printing business, selling 3D prints from a number of different designers who we pay monthly licensing fees to in return for cool designs. It started off purely as hobby printing. Martin really wanted a 3D printer for a long time so I bought him a basic one for his birthday 2 years ago. That particular printer was not the best, and we had lots of issues with it in regards to calibration before printing but we still enjoyed the end results. We started printing small, useful things for around the house like a battery sorter, small planters, headphone stands and little figures. We had so many troubles with that printer that we decided to upgrade to a much better and more user friendly printer.

We got the Bambu Lab P1S around March 2024 I think. After seeing how much faster and better quality the prints were and after showing friends and family the cool things we were able to make they started to request things and start purchasing things from us which was exciting. Nothing too big, just small things to start with but we got such great feedback from people who had received gifts etc from us that we thought maybe it would be a cool idea to start selling some of the things we were printing, and the idea kind of sprang from there.

Not knowing much about the process how difficult is it to 3D print, do you come up with the designs?

At the moment we don’t design the prints, we pay a monthly fee for the licensing rights to sell the prints from the designers. I have tried learning how to use 3D rendering softwares like Blender, following a famous tutorial for how to make a donut in 3D but I messed up the icing and didn’t go back to it for a while. It is tricky to learn and gave me a big headache at the end of it, but it is something I want to invest more time into learning. We searched on platforms like Patron to find designers that we thought would be interesting and popular, as at first we were just printing for ourselves and small toys for the boys and we found some really great ones.

At the moment we have 3 main licenses, one is for Zou3D who designs really cute articulated animals, like bears, sharks, octopi, hippos and bats to name a few. Another one in the same kind of category is Cinderwing. She creates beautifully intricate and articulated dragons mainly, as well as other small animals like spiders and frogs with a kind of creepy/cute vibe to them. Our most popular from Cinderwing is called a Crystal Dragon, and it sounds how it looks with cool crystals covering its back, horns and feet. We also have a licence for Pawpular Prints. They design a whole range of clickers. They are printed in seperate parts and then assemabled using keyboard switches (the springy part that exists under every key of your keyboard) to create clickers, satisfiying to press on and often used as a fidget toy. I have a purple moon clicker on my car keys and I’m always fiddling with it in my pocket or when I’m anxious.

How costly are 3D printers these days, I remember it being a bit of a new concept and super expensive, could you break down the requirements?

Well the main things you need are a 3D printer and filament. At the moment we have 3 printers; 1x Bambu Lab P1S and 2x Bambu Lab A1’s. As for filament we have about 50 rolls in stock. The P1S was the priciest, around £800 ish including what’s called an AMS system, meaning that you can produce 3D prints in up to 4 colours at a time. The A1 was a little cheaper, around £300 for just the printer and about £450 to include the AMS system. Filaments, depending on what type of filament you buy range from around £10-£30. We primarily use PLA+, which is one of the cheapest options but also very durable for the things we print. They come in solid, multicolour, silk variations (very shiny and silky as the name suggests), matte, glitter, UV reactive and more. We have a few favourite brands at the moment, the main one being eSun as we very, very rarely have any problems with the filament and the printed results are always very high quality. I don’t know about the most popular/best brands in England though, and the prices of the machines etc were just taken from the Bambu website as we paid in Norwegian Kroner from Norwegian websites.

Another thing you will need is 3D print files. Luckily there are plenty of websites to find pretty much whatever you can think of. We use Cults3D, Thingiverse, Thangs and Etsy mainly. The files need to be loaded into a slicer, so we used Bambu Slicer as it’s the program designed for our current printers. Essentially you slice the code, layer by layer of the object that you want to print and it creates a file for the printer. It then does everything for you! I’m honestly still kind of blown away by how it all works, and sometimes the finished results don’t even look 3D printed. It’s been really useful to have access to a printer, sometimes we might just think ‘oh I need something that does X, Y or Z’ and then you can have a quick search, a lot of times the files are free for personal use. Then bam, suddenly I have a spoon rest for when I’m cooking, or a soap dish for the bathroom. I needed something to transport our printed keyrings for a market, so I found a file for a simple carabiner, 20 minutes later I had one ready to use (it was really strong too!).

Where are the designs primarily sold?

At the moment our main sales have been from markets. We have done about 5 so far, ranging from 1 day in a community hall, to 3 days where we have needed to set up our market tent outside. We have received such great feedback from kids and parents, as there currently isn’t anything like this for sale elsewhere around here. There probably is in larger cities but as we are in a small area it’s definitely a niche business. We have sold to family members too, and most of Martin’s family now have cute green leopard gecko keyrings!

We do have a website that we need to get up and running, but we need to work out shipping costs and all the other boring things before we get to that point. We also need to figure out how to design a website properly!

How easy was it to set up a business in Norway?

It’s a fairly simple process, as it doesn’t need to be registered as a business until we surpass 50,000nok in sales. We haven’t reached that yet, though we have had quite a few succesful markets! Again, as we haven’t set up our website yet we haven’t really got to the nitty gritty of it all so it’s something that we will learn about when we take it a step further, but for now we are happy to do local markets, as Martin enjoys meeting customers face to face.

Is there anything you’d love to be able to 3D Print  or anything you have that you’ve not sold?

We would really love to sell more complex 3D prints, but with colour changes in prints (such as black eyes and a coloured body) it means a bit more wastage from the colour changes. The printer ‘purges’ the colour so that when it feeds through the new colour, it doesn’t have any residue of the last colour which could show up as imperfections. These kind of prints take more time and we would have to account for the cost of the waste along with the print itself, so it’s something we are not sure we would be able to pursue at the moment. Depending on the print or how many copies of the objects per print, we kind of have to judge whether the price can reflect that and if people would be happy to pay it, so at the moment we are just using more complex prints for display in our market stalls and to show what the printers are capable of.

Where do you see the future of your business going, do you have plans for expansion?

It would be absolutely amazing if we could get this business off the ground and to a point where I can pursue it full time. This would give me more time to also learn 3D modelling and hopefully produce our own designs at some point down the line. I currently work in a cantine but I have a lot of problems with my hands so I’m struggling at work a little bit so this would be a chance for me to still earn but also save my hands. Martin has just started a new job so at the moment our plans are to just continue doing markets and selling to individuals, as we have less time to properly plan, given that the boys who will be starting school soon too.

I wanted to thank Olena again for taking the time to speak with me and give such detailed answers while juggling twins and a business! I really learnt a lot and hope those of you who have read through have too. It’s always so interesting to get the perspective of someone who moved countries.

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