HELLO!!!
Time to draw the winner of the Leaf Necklace Pendant giveaway!
There you are, all of you, ready to be picked!
Hmmmmm, which one should it be?
But first lets mix them up a little bit...
Is it time now?
Yes, this is the one!
Ooooooooh...
JENNIFER!
Congratulations Jennifer Hiles! You have won a Leaf Necklace pendant from This Growing Collection!
I will send you an email very soon.

And to all of you who entered this giveaway: Thank you!
As a token of my appreciation I'm offering you 15% off everything in the shop with coupon code JULY2014. The code is valid all through the month of july.

This Growing Collection will be released on august 11th and I'm sure there will be some favourable discounts for you lovely readers of lottalosten.com, so make sure to keep an eye out for that.

Thanks again, and talk to you soon!

Until then:

Tjingeling!
/Lotta
Hey!
Time for another Two Two Two (with bonus Two Two and Two) because it was just too long ago, right?

Two self portraits of me dancing in the evening sun:
One from an angle making it look Oh so picturesque, and one from another angle featuring a very sceptic cat and the husband being all important talking to Hollywood while I'm dancing merrily.
Two of me wearing my new (to me) vintage red dress:
One with my arms down, and one with my arms up (in a silent "Bring on the party invitations-pose")
Two particularly tasty meals.
One breakfast at Tjörn island, and one "lunch" at the all you can eat cookie buffet Café Annorlunda.
Two from the harbour fest in the little fishing village Vik:
One of David and me watching the party in full swing, and one just before dark when the harbour looked almost like a painting.
Two of the spectacular view of Stenshuvud:
One before the sunset, and one during the sunset.
Two self portraits wearing all thrifted clothing:
One in a black shirt thrifted in Copenhagen and a skirt with buttons all the way from the floor to the waist, and one in a 90's coral H&M dress (that might have been made for a less busty lady than me, but hey! I dont care! I'm making bulging buttons a thing this season, remember where you read it first, everybody!) (Oh, and Bulging Buttons is definitely going to be the name of my future feminist punk rock band. Anyone who wants to join?)

So, I've been a no show here for the last week. Sorry for that! But I had to cuddle with Astor the Cat, smell the ocean, play yatzee with my parents, eat all the cookies, buy every vintage dress and walk hand in hand with David in gorgeous settings.
I'm back now though!

So talk to you soon again, and until then:

Tjingeling!
/Lotta
Hi!
I've always been a collector and I probably always will be. What I'm collecting though changes through time. If you ask me today I would say I collect old teapots, vintage clothes, hats, old postcards and photos of strangers and probably at least ten other things.
When I was a kid I collected pretty stationary, stamps, The Little Mermaid stickers and erasers.

Today when I cleaned out my desk drawers I found a cigar box and I looked at it for a while trying to remember what on earth could be in it. When I opened it I let go of a tiny laugh. One of those fond little giggles that slip out when you all of a sudden look at something from another time of your life and you get a flood of emotions that seem to have been stored in that little box since way back when.
I remember these erasers so well. I loved that little book even though it was absolutely rubbish as erasers go. That wasn't the point of it though. They were pretty and I could have them in my pen case in school and it was almost like having a little treasure with me everyday that I could fool the teachers into thinking they were just erasers, nothing more. Not pretty little tresaures to look fondly at when I was bored out of my mind in math class.
Then I found another collection but that is one that hasn't been planned. I didn't even know I had it.
Coins from around the world.
I have always liked to keep the coins left over from trips or given to me by my parents when I was a child but it was not a concious decision to start collecting coins. It just sort of happened along with life.
I used to store them in a little copper tin, that I made in school when I was 14, but the coins won't fit in it anymore and today when I looked through my drawers I found coins in every single drawer. From lots of different countries! Not worth much but still: coins!
I felt like Pippi Longstocking!

Two newfound treasures in one day.
That's a good start of the weekend, if I say so myself.
It's been about four months since Lights Out went viral and lots of things have been happening since then. Both on and off the internet and it's been crazy and wonderful and quite surreal.
We have a lot to thank the internet for; how the film spread all over the world and scared millions of people, how David got contacted by Hollywood and lots of influential people in the movie business, and how our lives will surely never be the same again. For that: Thank you internet!
There is one thing though that took me by surprise in a not so good way, and I thought I would take a few snippets of your time to talk about that.
From the moment Lights Out started spreading across the www people have been commenting the video with words like these:

That girl is uglier than the monster.
That chubby bitch kinda turns me on.
She's fat.
She's weirdly hot.
It's scary cause she's fat.
I would bang her.
This film would have been better with a pretty actress.


And a hundred variations of this.

I'm not writing this text in need of sympathy or reassurance but what I DO want to talk about is the part where it appears to be socially acceptable to speak about women like this the moment they appear on the internet.
I am quite baffled by how people (well, men, really) have felt the need to comment on my body and my physical appearance.

After reading some of the comments on my lack of sexiness the first thing that crossed my mind was this: I am wearing a big old boring pajama shirt! How come they focus on my body when I'm not even wearing something revealing and sexy?
Then I got angry for thinking like that because it shouldn't even matter if I was totally naked, dressed in a garbage bag or wearing red lace underwear; Call me naive, but I didn't think my looks had anything to do with this.

Lights Out is not about me being a chubby, ugly, weirdly hot (or even pretty, for that matter) woman going to bed. It's about a person going to bed. The gender and physical appearance of the person in this shortfilm has no relevance at all.
None whatsoever.
The role could have been played by a tiny girl, a huge woman, a skinny boy, an old man, it doesn't matter.
I'm not supposed to look sexy I'm supposed to be an ordinary person. Nothing more, nothing less. Ordinary. Someone you can identify with when you're going to bed late at night and maybe see something in the shadows you didn't think was there seconds before. When you're all alone and suddenly remember that shortfilm you saw once that was really creepy.

Just another human being. Like yourself.

So if that is what I am, then why would anybody want to point out how NOT model pretty I am?
How I should have been thinner. Blonder. Sexier.
I just don't get it.

Would Lights Out have been the same if it was a glamorous, shiny, perfect human specimen going to bed or would it maybe take some of the scariness out of it? When all the possibility of identification was removed from the premise?
I, for one, think so.
And I need to ask you something. Is it okay to live in a world where men (yes, all of the sexist comments have been written by men) feel that they are entitled to judge women's looks and bodies the second they appear in front of them, in real life or on a screen?
Where the first thing that pops into their mind when they see a woman is about how she looks and not what she seems to be doing. As a character, in a film, with a plot that's hopefully not only about how she's a woman with a body/face/breasts that the audience should comment about.

Maybe it would be an idea to follow what is happening in the story instead?
Maybe that would be something to try the next time?

Not unless the character in a film is turning to the camera saying "and now I want you to judge and critizice the body of the actor behind this role" are you to let your opinion of her physical appearance out on the internet.

There seems to be a widely spread idea that if something you're in goes viral on the internet the negative comments is sort of the price you have to pay for your internet stardom. It's harmless and you should be able to take it.
I've been thinking a lot about that because it makes no sense to me.
Well, yes, I am a 32 year old woman who is fairly satisfied with how I look and I think that I am perfectly alright just the way I am, but it still took me quite some time to learn how to handle these types of comments.

I live a lot of my life on the internet and love it to bits but as someone who has had to go through bullying in the real world as a kid, these hurtful comments feel so very close to what I was exposed to when I was only eleven years old and believed that what the bullies said must surely be the truth.
It's not nice and it's not something you just ignore. It takes time to learn how to leave the bad feelings towards yourself behind you and I know for certain that bullying can hurt for years and years to come.
Mean words hurt just as bad when written down as said out loud. It's not harmless at all.

Young girls and women should not have to toughen up and prepare themselves so that men could be free to judge them openly for their own enjoyment (What kind of enjoyment is that anyway?) and it's time people understand that just because you see a person in a video on youtube that person doesn't have thicker skin than you have.

I have come to the point when I can laugh at the stupid comments regarding my body and looks, and I keep telling myself it's lucky that I am a grown person who have had time to learn to love myself before I happened to be in a video that went viral. It would have been so much harder fifteen, or even ten, years ago.

One thing this whole experience has made me realize though is this:
I will never try to squeeze myself into a mold I won't fit into when that shouldn't matter anyways. I would love to be in many movies and I hope Lights Out is only the beginning for me. If film makers and directors want me in their movies I hope it will be because of how I act, not how I look.

Unless "slightly above average height, freckled, redhead with a european accent" is just what you need for your coming film project, because then I'm all on board!

/Lotta Losten
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Our Lights Out hallway can look quite magical sometimes.
Hi!
Oh my! It's been so great to see how people have liked and shared my latest blogpost (Being a woman in a shortfilm gone viral) because I really have been thinking a lot about the topic for quite some time now and that my words actually meant something to more people than myself makes me insanely happy.

One of the most common responses I've gotten regarding my blog post is something like this "you shouldn't listen to those trolls" and while I agree (and probably would have said the same thing just five months ago) I feel like it's a much bigger issue than just ignoring stupid trolls. Because when you read hurtful words about you it's very hard not to feel sad for a while. And if people's only response is "don't listen to that" it only gets worse because what if you actually DO feel kinda sad? Well, then you also feel a bit ashamed of the fact that you can't just shrug it off like all the people around you say you should be able to.
I felt that it was very important to me to write about all this to say that "no, you are not allowed to speak about me this way" and now I feel so much better with myself.

And then, yesterday, I was contacted by a swedish radio station that wanted to talk to me about my text and my experience with all this.
You can listen to the clip here if you want to (it's in swedish though). It was so much fun and I feel like I remembered to say everything I wanted to.

Before I run off to do all the things I need to do before going to work, let me just say this: Thank you so much for all your lovely comments and for sharing my text! It means so much to me, and if it can also mean something to you then I'm just over the moon!


Tjingeling!
Lotta
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Some late night filming is happening. Stay tuned.
Hello!

So we made a new horror short!
This makes the third in our Apartment Trilogy that started off with Cam Closer, continued with Lights Out and now wraps up neatly with this one called Pictured.
As usual David and I made this movie in our apartment late at night.
To add to the heat from the strong lights we used, Sweden has been experiencing a heat wave like no other. Our apartment was scary hot! Matte powder and many breaks of just screaming "IT'S SO BLOODY HOT!! I'M MELTING AWAY" made the evening more or less sufferable.

Oh! And the girl in the photo is played by (the usually very lovely) Hanna Johansson.
The film is only 3 minutes long so you should watch it now! I hope you like it.
Now I'm off to stuff myself with frozen youghurt.

Until next time:

Tjngeling!
/Lotta
Hi!
A couple of weeks ago David and I went to Österlen for a week. We hadn't been to the house since spring so we were really excited to go!
We had a really nice week together with my parents, and as usual my camera was bursting with photos from this lovely place in the south of Sweden.
One day David had to stay home and work, but the rest of us went on a fleamarket trip.
There's so many fleamarkets/antique shops around Österlen in the summertime so you can just drive aimlessly for a while and you will find at least a couple of new ones you didn't know of before. Yes, it's heaven.
This place was a new find for us this summer. Lots of really cool furniture and stuff!
I bought two lampshades, one orange red and one dark green. I had to drag David to that place the day after as well because I knew he would like it too.
And look at that old slide!
After making some good vintage finds you'll need coffee!
We went to Backagården in Löderup.
David and I had been introduced to this place a couple of days earlier by some friends and I had to show my parents since you can't know of enough lovely coffee places.
Ahhh, what a wonderful place!
The pavlova tasted heavenly.
They had a yawny cat there.
He yawned a lot.
Beautiful place!
If you ever happen to be close to Löderup I recommend you to go to Backagården! Looks really dull and small from the outside but then you walk through a few rooms (it feels almost like I imagine walking through the wardrobe to Narnia) and end up in the wonderful green house and garden.
Couldn't get more summer-y than this, right?
After the coffee and cakes our energy levels were pumped for some more vintage shopping!
My dad looked through the place quickly and found a chair outside to check up on his emails or the latest news. The reception at our house is really bad so you kind of have to take the opportunity when it arrives.
The tiny dog to the right was the scariest little shit I've ever seen. It ran towards me with all it's teeth showing, growling. I have about ten photos of it doing some really weird poses were it's impossible to see how the legs are even connected to the body and, hm, where is the head anyway? Terrifying!
In the evening, when David had finished working, we went to Fridens gårdskrog, a pizzeria in the middle of nowhere. David was super excited! Pizza!
Such a cozy atmosphere.
Good looking husband.
Good looking pizza. Tapenad, brie and smoked chicken. So tasty!
And then some coffee after the food.
Back at the house Astor the cat looked good infront of the books.
One evening we sat in our garden and had a little barbeque.
When the golden hour came I took some photos of my dad with flowers behind his ears. I got this great idea in may of making a little photo book with men with flowers in and around their beards, well, now the internet seems to have exploded with flower beards and I feel kind of bummed out. I still want to go through with it though so I might show you some more photos soon.
David in the light.
The flowers ended up behind my ear as well.
My beautiful mother.
My lovely father.
Looking at birds? Who knows.

I have some more photos from Österlen to show you, of a little evening adventure David and I had. I'll be back with those soon.

Hope your week starts of with a really great monday.
Talk to you soon!


Tjingeling!
/Lotta
Hello!
Time for a Two Two Two again, and today seems to be mostly about elevators and mirrors. Some days just are like that, right?
Okay, let's go:

Two from the funky elevator of my friends apartment building: One with kisses, and one with sunglasses. You have to choose you know. You can't have both.
Two from a little midnight filming:
One in the elevator with David's fabulously constructed IKEA dustbin/tinfoil lamp, and one from our basement that looks extra scary in the middle of the night.
Two self portraits taken with the TimerCam app:
One showing off my extremely pale legs that never before had seen the sun, and one where I'm sporting my new (and extremely purple) bike shorts.
This last one needs a little more explaining, I think, so I'm stealing the text I wrote on my instagram:
"I'm calling this one 'Philosofical in bike shorts' Remember the horrid bike shorts era? Well, for me it's more a sake of having intact inner thighs than a fashion statement. Because of the extreme heat wave here in Sweden I've had to succumb and leave my beloved tights at home. Yesterday I went on a bike shorts hunt and apparently I'm not the only one with evil inner thighs in war with eachother because the shorts were sold out in every single store except for the sports store. So now I'm a hot pink bike shorts kind of gal. Who would've thought!"

Tjingeling!
/Lotta
Hej!
We are in a creative flow like no other!
Today David and I uploaded a new little horror short, and let me tell you, I am so incredibly proud of this one! We are both in this little film, so you get to see a little bit of David this time too!
It's quite different from our previous films in the Apartment trilogy but not less scary. Just different.
It's called Not so fast and it's not even two minutes long.

I think it's awesome, If I may say so myself, and I hope you think so too!
As usual David and I made the movie without any other people involved. That makes for some really interesting behind the scenes clips, so we thought we'd show you exactly how it looked when we filmed this, just the two of us.
This also explains really well how David made all the lights and equipment we used to make this film. Really worth the watch!


I hope you enjoy the fruits of our creative flow!
See you soon.

Tjingeling!
/Lotta
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