Handmade gift for my best friend – a watercolour sunflower painting and a mini album

One of my bestest friends lives far away, back where I come from – Poland. Me and Marta have been friends for about thirteen years now. For ten years we have lived in different countries, about 1600 km away from each other. Our friendship is still strong, even though we only talk to each other once a month and see each other once a year.

It was Marta’s 30^th birthday back in January. I wanted to give her something special, something that will show her how much I value our friendship. I thought there is no other way than handmade.

Sunflowers are her favourite flowers so I decided to paint a sunflower with my watercolours. I’m definitely not an artist but I think it came out quite good. I really enjoyed painting it, I will definitely try and find some watercolour painting courses so I could learn some techniques.

I felt like the painting was not enough. I found some pictures of us from good old high school days and made a ‘journey through our friendship’ mini album. Apparently none existent eyebrows were ‘it’ back in 2008. There is few more embarrassing pictures in there, looking through them brought back lots of great memories.

What do you think about handmade gifts? Would you like to receive a gift like this from a close friend?

 

Is wearing fur morally worse than wearing leather?

Click here to read the Guardian article.

Source http://atrl.net/forums/showthread.php?p=23415933#23415933

First of all let me say that I eat meat and buy leather but I don’t buy real fur. I would not be able to remove meat from my diet so if I eat meat I might as well buy leather since it is a by-product of animal farming, right? However according to the Guardian article leather industry is linked with pollution which is something I haven’t considered before.

When it comes to fur, the industry also creates high amounts of greenhouse gases and air pollutants. In fact the article states that the pollutant levels coming from production of fur are higher than any other textile. That’s the environmental side of things but what about morals? Fur is produced only for the sake of fashion so isn’t that selfish?

I don’t know if I am wrong or right here but I believe that we can farm sustainably for meat and if leather is the by-product of that industry then why not use it. Fur on the other side is a different story to me. I personally would feel wrong wearing a real fur coat. Sure, I’ve heard about sustainable fur farms but to my knowledge there isn’t many of those. More often than not, an endangered species gets killed and then skinned alive so that someone can wear a soft fluffy coat. I personally would not feel good with this.

I am curious what your thoughts are! Is it just as immoral to buy leather as it is to buy fur and I am being a hypocrite? Or maybe you think both are ok and we should wear whatever we want? Have you ever thought about the environmental impacts these two industries have on our planet?

Or maybe I should ditch thinking about morals and environment, and have fluffy gloves made out of my cat? …

 

Access to Success Route with Open University

The good thing about Open University is that you can ‘try it out’ without committing to the long term studies. If you want to get the feel of what it’s like to study with OU, you don’t even need to commit to a whole year. OU offers 3 month (at least that’s how long mine was) long introductory modules called ‘Access’.

I have gone through ‘Access to Success’ route two years ago which started with access module and followed by a level 1 module. I was eligible for funding so I paid £75 as opposed to something like £3000. I have been searching the web today but I can’t find any information about ‘Access to Success’ route. I am guessing they don’t do this anymore. This is a big shame because it allows people to get the proper feeling of what it’s like to study with OU without getting a loan or spending all of that money!

However I found that they do funding for the Access course and you might be eligible to study it for free. It’s not as good of a deal but it’s still an amazing opportunity to see if OU is for you. ‘Access’ is a great module especially for those who didn’t hold a text book in their hand for the past ten years, like me! ‘Access’ module I studied was called ‘Y181 Introducing Environment’ and it wasn’t very demanding. I don’t know if they still do this one but there is a variety of subjects to choose from. Studying ‘Access’ module gave me a chance to see if I am capable of motivating myself to study after a whole day at work; if I can actually handle studying on a university level; if my brain is still spongy enough to absorbs information and most of all if I find the topic interesting and enjoy the experience.

I sound like I’m sponsored by OU and trying to sell the product here… I’m not. I just had a great experience with OU so far. All of my tutors have been very supportive and helpful and they give great feedback.

Head over to this web http://www.open.ac.uk/courses/do-it/access to check out the details for the ‘Access’ course. Give them a ring if you have a question or you are unsure of something. I guarantee you that they will be helpful.