Annette has a master’s degree in design, specialising in visual communication. A hard-working and driven person, Annette was eager to enter a career in graphic design and illustration – but there were unknown challenges ahead.

“Around the same time as I was accepted to university, I got sick. I was mysteriously unwell, and would years later be diagnosed with ME,” Annette says.

With ME came extreme tiredness, pain and confusion. Despite all her efforts to become well, it became clear that an entirely different future lay ahead of her than she had planned for.

Faced with a challenge that she couldn’t simply work hard to beat – ironically, it would only make her worse – she had to overcome the shock and invent a new outlet for her creative energies. A path where she could control her own time and space, while contributing to the world like she always had wanted.

“My illness was part of the reason I started working with origami. For me, origami was and is a purely positive thing – something I’m able to work on, figure out and develop in my own time. I guess I’ve always had a fascination with paper, and I’m an orderly person who enjoys symmetry and balance. Initially, I saw origami as a sort of personal challenge – I wanted to crack the code and understand how it worked,” Annette says. “I enjoy working with the natural paper and a physical, three-dimensional medium. I gave myself the challenge of doing it, and when I achieved that goal – I was hooked.”

That creating paper art takes a very long time, was a bonus. She could set long term goals and work at a slow and steady pace. Annette developed her skills further within origami and paper art, and secretly started producing her own brand of lampshades.

“After signing up for a Christmas market here in Bergen, I took 30 of my “babies” to display. I had no real expectations, but to my surprise and joy I was met with an incredible response, and sold a lot of my products. People asked where I’d ordered the lamps, and assumed they were being produced in big quantities somewhere else – but the reality was that I was creating each of them at home at my living room table!” Annette says.

Since then, Annette’s business has grown steadily. She’s entirely self-taught, having learned everything she knows through trial and error on her own as well as being inspired by her research on the web. Annette is a perfectionist, and she wants each piece she creates to be excellent. Her products originate in creativity and imagination, and Annette is inspired by the diversity of expression they can create.

“Most of my products can be used in several ways. One of my recent designs, Sonobe Tetris, is made to either stand alone or be combined to create different interesting forms and stylistic expressions. My origami lamps, which are folded using a single piece of paper, are designed in such a way that they can hang in both directions vertically, as well as mounted from the ceiling, displayed on a shelf or any other way. That’s partly where the name Shapes and Shadows came from – I like the idea that people can play around with my products.”

Annette is always looking ahead to the next challenge and new ideas for her small business. “I’d like to be as good as I can possibly be. I’m really interested in learning new techniques within origami, and I find true joy in figuring out how to create different patterns, pushing my limits and learning new things.”