How I cope- Mercedes

I have a number of ways of coping my main one is keeping busy, but also remembering the person in a certain way.  I like to light a candle on special occasions such as birthdays, Christmas' and Fathers day.  When I am doing something like a test or something where I need a little extra luck I always wear my dads earrings as a good luck charm and it is also very comforting.  Lastly, as a coping mechanism for myself and my family is a bench, we bought a bench shortly after our dad passed which is somewhere we can go to vent to and share our problems.

Ways I cope- Mercedes

I find one of the best ways to cope for myself is to keep busy and do things.  I find cleaning highly therapeutic and keeps my mind busy from thinking about certain things. On a Saturday when my mum is at work I clean the whole house, upstairs and downstairs,I find it the best coping method for me. 

Being Creative with the Letters

Putting the letters against a brick wall, changing the filter when taking the pictures to make the letters look brighter.

Lastly, we put our letters on the stairs going up to represent positivity.

Being Creative with the Letters

We came up with the idea of going out and taking pictures of our letters around natural habitats. Firstly we went up the river and displayed our letters on each step in order to get a modern day background in it. 

Secondly, we used a land of grass to display our letters to get a more natured affect to our picture, we also try to place them in a large tree but we felt this didn't work as one of us had to hold some of the letters as they keep falling.

Being Creative with the letters

Being Creative with the Letters

We decided to get photos of us with our hand made letters in order to express ourselves whilst also having fine as we are trying to create a positive campaign. 

Poster Idea 2

 Here are three poster designs using the same image, but with the text 'routine' positioned in different places. This idea was discovered through Jamie-Lee's OCD that she is having to deal with on a daily basis, everything has to be neat and in order. We have tested out different font colours to see which one stood out the most, our final one is going to be the the bottom left hand one with the multi-coloured letters in order for the word routine to stand out. 

Poster Idea 1

Together we created this poster using illustrator we have used words that we most think that people suffer with who need to use coping strategies to get through life.  The clouds in the background represent happiness and positivity.  

                             

Ways I cope - Jamie-Lee

A major part of my OCD is the organisation of everything in my house from being the tins in the cupboard, stuff on the shelves, food in my fridge and etc. Here is two images of my fridge that I re organise on a daily bases due to my family members moving things and also things being added or taken away from it.  My bedroom is my pride of joy as this is were the OCD takes place throughout the day making sure everything is clean and things are put in the correct spaces they originally came from. By doing this daily it makes me feel good and I can get on with other things day  about it when its completed and looking to my perfection. But if I place something in another place or miss out something within my routine it will play in the back on my mind till it is done.

My OCD doesn't just affect me in my home, also at work and when I'm just casually out. When i am out of my house, I know that people around me notice my mental health issue, due to work colleagues mentioning it and also trying to help me out by making the till area clean and in the order I can work with it at. What I mean here is that before I start work on the till area, all playing card boxes need to full, resale shoes and clothes needs to have just one place behind tills and also the bags for like need to be in order from extra large down to medium.

Creating 3D Letters

Creating the large 3D letters for this project, I found that this was a new way of coping with my mental health issue 'OCD'. As it made me feel relaxed and very pleased with myself from the final outcome, I managed to take my mind of everything and just have fun with it. Due to this project being based no how we cope and also other peoples strategies, I have taught myself a new way of coping.

However when it came to painting them the paint that we originally bought wouldn't stick on the letters properly and you could still see the newspaper articles underneath which we didn't like the look of or want to happen. From this we then had to paint all of them white wall paint so that the newspapers were covered completely, then when painting them again the second set of paint then worked.