Emma Aldenryd, 18, has dermatographia, a rare condition that causes her skin to swell up and turn red when touched.
Rather than letting her skin issue cause her frustration, student Emma celebrates her allergy to touch by drawing designs on her arms.
Here’s how it works: Emma runs a pencil over her skin, which causes the lines she draws to swell and raise up, leaving illustrations that fade after half an hour.
She’s basically a human Etch A Sketch, as the speedy designs only hang around for a small while to be appreciated before fading away.
Emma, from Aarhus, Denmark, said: ‘I started by drawing quite random stuff like a bunch of words that came to mind on my arms.
‘I spelt small words and showed them to my friends as a party trick.
‘People who I showed were really impressed, especially after they tried to do the same on their own skin but couldn’t do it.
‘Lots of people question whether it hurts, but my dermatographia has never hurt.
‘I did get some wild reactions and some people thought I was dying.
‘It’s really itchy but I learnt to ignore it. It hasn’t had any impact on my life.’
Emma discovered she had dermatographia three years ago, when a friend noticed her arms were red and swollen.
She later learned that her two cousins have the same condition, but has never met anyone else with it.
Doctors prescribed antihistamines, but when Emma realised these would stop her doing her body drawings she ditched them – thankfully her symptoms are mild enough that this doesn’t cause her any harm.
She shares her skin drawings on her Instagram page @dermatographia_ whenever she has flare-ups and can thus do her doodles.
Emma said: ‘I try and do lots of symbols that everybody will understand like smiley faces or well-known words like Hi.
‘I do the designs with a pencil so that the lines are more crisp.
‘If you did them with anything else it would make the designs less readable as the swelling would become broader.
‘Usually, I do them quite quickly, in under a minute so that the designs are even when I photograph them, for aesthetic reasons.’
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