Scrapbooking *THIS POST CONTAINS LANGUAGE THAT SOME PEOPLE MY FIND OFFENSIVE*

In the last few weeks I have discovered that there is indeed a new type of craft activity that I dislike, it is the art of the scrapbook.

I will say right now from the start that I have always been rubbish at anything vaguely artistic or crafty.

I’m a Guide leader that hates craft activities, which may well be a rarity.

My lack of talent in the craft department is not something that I’m really bothered about. Lets face it everyone is crap at something; some people are crap at lots of things. I’m crap at any activity requiring pens, pencils, wool, glue, glitter, fuzzy felt, paint or any other craft material.

As a child at school it used to bother me that my painting was not as good as anyone else’s, or that my roman chariot looked like a penguin- now I’m fine with my crapness I accept and love it as an individual feature of me.

My lack of crafty artisticness does occasionally cause me frustration. I can’t sow for example which is a relatively common skill that the vast majority of the population possesses. It is also a skill I find people assume I can do, I’m not entirely sure whether that is some deep routed stereotype that every woman in the land can sow, o the fat that I am a guide leader. Either way people are often shocked when it arises that I cannot sow. Even my totally blind mother can hand sow and does the majority of my sowing, so its not even that I can say its because of my disability I’m just crap at it!

So anyway I went off on a bit of a tangent there I am currently involved in a project that requires me to make a scrapbook.

Scrapbooking I have recently discovered is both an activity I do not particularly enjoy, one that I find very difficult and that realistically I am crap at. (After all making a scrapbook requires craft skills)

I can also conclude that scrapbooking is also a dangerous activity; I have indeed sustained a scrapbook injury.

Whilst cooking on Monday evening I burnt my thumb, it was quite a nasty one there was the sizzle and the smell of burning flesh, still there was no blood and after some time under the cold tap all was well until….

Later on in the evening whilst adding to my scrapbook I got UHU on my burn.

For those that don’t know UHU is a solvent-based glue that can stick anything. 

I used UHU because its good at sticking things together as its very sticky but when it dries I can peel off the large amounts of it that I get all over the place.

Unfortunately getting it on the area of burnt flesh and subsequently peeling it off was not good.

In short I peeled off the glue and a lot of skin came off with it. (That does not normally happen)

Lesson learned don’t attempt to do anything crafty if you already know you are crap at it.

Disablism on the application

So picture the scene your disabled you want a job, you see/hear of one being advertised you apply what happens (in my case 9 out of 10 times) bugger all.

Now excuse me for being confused but wasn't the DDA (disability discrimination act) and all its little additions supposed to give us more rights to employment so it is illegal to discriminate against people purely based on there disability?

Don't get me wrong I'm sure there are success story's but from my own personal experence employers have a simple way of getting around the DDA legislation, a crafty way which makes it difficult to prove disablism.

In my experience they simply do not reply to your application or give you any acknowledgement, its hard to prove that they have not responded to your application because of your disability yet it nearly always happens, in my case.

There are of course plenty of other ways employers get around the DDA, I don't actually think further legislation is the way forward for getting disabled people in to work, nether do I think that government moves to remove or reduce benefits to disabled people is the way to go either.

I think the government need to focus on education, I may have rabbited on about this before but its to late for the elder generation. Children should learn about disability the same way they learn about smoking; OK perhaps not quite the same but the topics should be of equal importance.

How about this a new subject on the national curriculum: Disability Studies, learning all about the culture and great things disabled people contribute to our everyday lives.

My Art

Recently I have rediscovered my love of art, I'm not your usual art lover tho, I don't get classical art all tho I am often in awe of those famous artists as there works are skillful, just not me. I'm partially sighted so my disability denotes that I am unlikely to be fabulous at art in the world of fully sighted people and if I'm honest the thought of spending my weekend looking at a load of pictures hung on a wall is not fun.

Its amazing I can deal with even the thought of being artistic, the scars from school art lessons, being the only partially sighted one. In junior school I was the one who's drawing was never as good as anyone else's, or the one who's waterfall looked like a heap of wet newspaper. The other kids didn't really understand there was a reason I was so rubbish at being creative. Actually at some points the teachers didn't even get it I remember distinctly when I was in year 4 at school and my teacher said to the class 'people with glasses can see more than people without so they are even better at copying art'. I have no idea where she got that idea from, but I seem to remember it annoying me!



In secondary school it was little better if not worse, the art staff where patronising, really patronising, they gave up on me before I had even picked up a pencil, they could just tell, probably because of my disability that I would be rubbish. I had to endure the head of art pretending to no what my picture was of, getting round it by saying ' I like the way you have created movement' when I had actually drawn a rock. One of my favorite lesions of art (NOT) was when we where doing something, I can't even remember what it was but we where using very fine pencils and pressing very lightly, that was the idea anyway. So me, nose to paper forced by the teacher to use the same pencil as everyone else tried my best, what I ended up with was a landscape of hills and mountains and sky , my teacher actually said it was one of the best pieces I had done all year and gave me a merit. I was surprised but to be honest couldn't really see the whole picture so assumed it must have been sort of all right. well in next weeks lesson we where doing some painting type thing I opened my art book to the first available page did my art. Teacher came up to me to look at it and we where both shocked to discover I had actually painted all over last weeks work, I couldn't even see it was there.

So school art was pretty horrific, I mean that was a brief selection of the horrors, not including things from the other pupils!

I only really got in to art and thought i could do something constructive, possibly even good, after I brought my graphics tablet. For those who don't know a graphics tablet is basically a small pen and pad which you plug in to the PC and use instead of the mouse to do arty stuff. Its opened up a whole new world of creativity for me, I haven't been able to use my graphics tablet since my PC blew up last year, at that time I lost all my work, everything I had created.

Now finally on Thursday I reinstalled the software and shock horror it worked!

since then I have really realised just how much I missed not having it, I cant stop creating, doodling and generally making a virtual mess.



I have created a number of images (which can be seen in the slide show under the title of this blog) One of them I have even entered in to the mind M.A.D art exhibition. its called 'A world of brightness' and here it is.