OT ATC

Kirsty’s Crafty Charity Calendar Challenge

(Try saying that three times quickly!)

My good friend Kirsty is an Occupational Therapist, and to celebrate World OT day (which is on 27th October 2011) she has set her blog readers a challenge: to create an ATC that celebrates an aspect of Occupational Therapy. If you don’t know what OT is, you need to visit Kirsty’s blog here and discover the amazing, varied and under-valued work that Occupational Therapists around the world undertake.

As Kirsty was introduced to ATCs by me, I did feel somewhat obliged to join in her challenge! But she has already had lots of entries, and her aim is to create a 2012 OT calendar to sell for charity.

So please join in! I’ve enjoyed the challenge, not least as I have learnt in more detail what Occupational Therapy entails.

So here is my entry to the challenge.

OT: live your life.

My initial idea was to use the letters ‘o’ and ‘t’ as the main focus of the ATC, and it occured to me that put together, them form a little stick person. So using some suitably sized rub-ons I made my little man. One of the things that OTs do is to help people regain independence after illnesses. For people with a weakened grip even things like pouring a cup of tea can be very difficult. OTs can encourage independence with the use of tools – in the case of my OT stick man, he is using a kettle tipper. I have never seen a kettle tipper in the flesh before, so it was an interesting experience trying to draw one! I used a font from my Scrapbooker’s Handwriting Workshop book for the journalling at the top and bottom, and softened the look of the background with pink chalk to match the rub-ons. I used some star gems to fill in the empty spaces (the stick man wasn’t as big as I’d planned!), and finally I used a marker pen to colour the edge of the ATC to add definition.

Please join in with the challenge if you can – there are some great examples of OT ATCs already on Kirsty’s blog. You have until 26th October!