Oxford rejection letter gets turned into stunning piece of art

Rejection is always hard, including when you learn that you haven’t been accepted into your dream school.

Receiving that dreaded rejection letter in the mail (which often has hollow condolences) can just add salt into the wound. So when 18-year-old Claudia Vulliamy received one from Oxford University, she didn’t hold onto it as testament to an unfulfilled dream. Instead, she decided to turn that letter into a piece of art.

Vulliamy told ITV News that she was initially disappointed when she received the rejection letter in the mail, but then she soon became inspired. That led to her creating a unique painting. It was completed in just 15 minutes after she cut up the letter.

“I felt like making it into something,” she told ITV News. “I just thought it was a laugh.”

The next day her mother, Louisa Saunders, came home from work and spotted her daughter’s creation. She then tweeted out a photo of it.

Saunders was shocked by the response on Twitter to her daughter’s artwork.

“Usually nobody bothers with my Twitter,” she told ITV News.

“As soon as I clicked off the post, in the very first minute there was all these (message) notifications.”

Saunders says her daughter has always been creative, but she was taken aback from the response from others to the “cheerful” painting.

Vulliamy has now put Oxford behind her and is hoping to study at Durham University. She said that, like her mother, she too was surprised by the response to her painting.

“Usually social media can be quite brutal, but it made my week,” she said.