JENNIFER Sweet is the type of person who enjoys a challenge. The type of person who relishes the idea of building her own house from scratch in the middle of remote east coast countryside. The type of person who doesn't blanch at chopping up her wedding furniture and transforming it into fashionably distressed dining-room chairs. The type of person who can not only reproduce to perfection, but personalise those inherently tricky DIY design ideas that constitute the bulk of glossy home- improvement magazines.
It comes as no surprise, then, to learn that the cheery primary school teacher from Burntisland has recently launched a series of weekend courses aimed at creative homebodies, offering the chance to learn everything from stencilling to decoupage and paint effects.
Though she comes from a family with a dominant artistic gene - painting, architecture, and interior design are the most popular family occupations - Sweet herself is entirely self-taught. She does confess a youthful predilection for Blue Peter's predecessor, Picture Book, which gave many lessons on crafts.
But it wasn't until Sweet and her own family moved into a house of disrepair some 10 years ago that the arty DIY bug really got hold. ``The house was a real state,'' she sighs, ``due to the fact that the previous tenants had kept horses, dogs, sheep, and cows, which they had actually allowed in the house.''
Sweet then set to work transforming the spacious but maltreated house into a design palace by following the step-by-step instructions set out by literally thousands of magazines she bought that advised the houseowner with an eye on the pennies how to decorate their house as cheaply and stylishly as possible.
Having completed that daunting task, it was time to sweep on to her next major assignment - how to convert the shell of a farmhouse steading sited one-and-a-half miles from civilisation and running water, albeit in beautifully hilly Fife surroundings, into an inhabitable two-floor comfortable home for a husband, three children, and three dogs.
Now the household is the best showroom Sweet could have. On the weekend courses, pupils are welcome to wander throughout the many rooms observing the colour schemes, the glazed, burnished, ragged, stippled, dragged, antiqued, and colourwashed walls and furniture in all their imaginative glory, before stepping into the last and most intriguing room of all.
This is the Aladdin's cave of interior craft design, a workroom and hub of creative activity where pupils ``learn their trade in a day''.
So far, the one-day courses have proved a great success, with enthusiasts coming from the Glasgow and Edinburgh areas and leaving eight hours later with binbags full of professional-looking work, a new range of skills and, says Sweet, a real lift in self-esteem.
``It really is a confidence booster for many people. There was one friend who had never laid a hand on a paintbrush. She came to the stencil and paint-finishing course and went home and did a mural on her bathroom wall because she felt so motivated.''
One of the benefits of the very hands-on courses Sweet runs is that unlike the plethora of DIY magazines proferring the same instructions on paint techniques, etc, Sweet is there in person should any problems arise.
``With magazines you really have to be able to read between the lines. Even with the most foolproof ideas, they never tell you what to do if it goes wrong. And that,'' she asserts, ``is the big difference. Having learned everything myself by trial and error, having been there, done it and painted over it, then I know the pitfalls and can tell people what to avoid.''
If ever a Blue Peter for grown-ups was invented, then you can be sure it would be Jennifer Sweet they'd call on to present a craft spot.
n.Jennifer Sweet's Craigkelly House Workshops in Burntisland can be contacted on 01592 874759.
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