My Incredible Instructables Son

It’s time to share the creative genes with you all. This entry is all about my incredible son, Logan. He and his dad have a tremendous amount in common. Let’s just say the apple, it’s right next to the tree. Oh, he gets a little from yours truly, but his amazing ability to engineer with such precision, his attention to detail, the ease to which he can visualize, all comes straight from his dad, not to mention his capability of writing with such accuracy. This he does with the ability to come across with the aw shucks, anyone can do it attitude.

He has been making three dimensional paper crafted art for some time now. It started with a miniature model of the house from the 2009 Pixar movie Up (made from index cards). Then he moved on to a paper model of a cryptex, which Logan explained to me is a mechanism in which a word is spelled out to unlock a chamber that holds a secret object.

He created a prop Dagger of Time (from the movie Prince of Persia) using materials including paper, chipboard, and a light bulb. The light bulb was used for the handle with the sand of time inside. He has also made numerous other items such as a paper gun and cross bow, miniature chainsaw, and the key from the Pirates of the Caribbean series. He is the constant 3-D producer in the family. I don’t think there is ever a time when a project isn’t under construction in his room or on the workbench.

Now, what makes this incredible son also an Instructables contributor? One of his latest projects, a corrugated cardboard shelf (shown in photo at top). Logan built the shelf and then posted a how-to guide on the popular website Instructables.com. Soon his Instructable became popular and is now listed in the featured section. So far it has been viewed and commented on many times. The Instructable can be viewed at the following link. Amazing Cardboard Shelf!

Logan also likes working on animation related projects and has a love of movies and their production. You can view one of his animations here: A Tiny Animation.

Whatever my incredible thirteen-year-old becomes one day will likely have something to do with what he enjoys now. What he has become so far amazes me and makes me proud. And it’s not even his creations, it’s that he is such a great kid. Thanks Logan, you are my #1 son!

This post, brought to you by the letter “M”

How do you encourage college kids this time of year? They have just had a month off, the holidays are over, and they are now on the second semester, at the halfway point. It is the dead of winter and summer seems forever away. It’s not that anticipated beginning of a new school year, and it’s not the end they are so relieved to reach. It is the middle, and that’s where they are stuck. Thus, the postcard of the week.

Well, I realize now that I grew up being stuck in the middle of most things. In fact I was even born right in the middle of the United States, just a little south of where I live now. When I was a kid in school, and we had to line up alphabetically, I was always right in the middle. With the last name McCulley, that is where you would always find me.

I wasn’t a middle child, however. There are only my sister and I, so being the younger one I was not the middle, but the little one. This too had its way of ensuring a middle position in my world. I was always stuck in the middle of the back seat with a car full of people, usually having to sit on someone else’s lap. And then there is the yearly class photo. Every year the littlest one in the class was stuck sitting on the floor, in the middle of the front row, holding the class sign. Every year that little person was yours truly. Need I say more. The evidence is here. The clue ~ pink has always been my favorite color. :)

Well, as I am now middle-aged and can look back on it all, I realize that being stuck in the middle isn’t such a bad place to be after all. In fact it is a very happy place to be. There is a security and a peacefulness about this place in life and I welcome it happily.

So, if this time of year makes you feel like you’re stuck between the excitement of the holidays and the activities of the summer months, or if you’re right in the middle of your school year, take heart and remember that nothing has a beginning and end without a middle. As the song says . . . stuck in the middle with you . . . I think that’s a pretty good place to be.

For the love of color

Can color alone make someone so happy? Well, yes, I think it can. I can stand for hours in the paint store looking at paint chips, fanning them, arranging them, rearranging them, refanning them, restacking them and then happily leaving with them. Then I get home and start the process over again.

Two of the four people in this family do not understand that at all. And well, I feel sorry for them, I really do. Oh, to be missing out on the love of color. I have the daughter though, and she’s right there with me in a wonder-spectrum-land. We’re a little like Alice in her wonderland, but with the drug of color pulling us down that rabbit hole.

Many times when I start a new collection I get out the trusted paint chips, deal out the colorful cards, and see just how that hand will play out. It’s just as exciting as beginning new sketches, playing with shapes for the patterns, and wondering just where the collection will end up. I never have the entire design in my mind, but I have a very good sense of what I want it to become.

Here is a little study in color I’ve added to the Beau Nouveau collection. One of my all time fave color combinations is using the warm and cool blends of a color together. In that I mean, a coral (pink-orange) with a bubble gum (pink-purple), or a chartreuse (yellow-green) with an aqua (blue-green). When I can mix colors in that way I am in my wonder-spectrum-land of happiness. That’s all it takes.

What goes around, comes around

Do you ever see a new dress, or tea towel, or umbrella in the store and think, where, where do I know that print? I could swear that I had a skirt out of that exact print when I was a kid. Well, more likely than not, you may actually be seeing the same designs coming again thirty years later.

I have been working on a collection for quite some time now and remixed, recolored, renewed and rejazzed it up to become a fun, floral, feelin’ free group of prints that fling me right back to high school mini skirts and neck scarves. Get ready to step back to the past, or if you’re young enough to find it brand spankin’ new, enjoy the trip, but know the style wasn’t first with your gen.

I present Retroflection, where we reflect on the past with a renewed spirit of style!

Nouveau, Nouveau?

When something is even newer of the new, what do you call it? The collection I have shared on another occasion or two is called Beau Nouveau, or New Beauty. Well, I have just remixed the collection once again and now it’s New, New Beauty or in French maybe it would be called Beau Nouveau, Nouveau. Whatever the case, here is a reblending of a favorite floral collection that I have designed.

Some of elements within the collection will be showing up on my new website. Yes, my “nouveau” website is on its way and hopefully I will be able to “sher” it with you by Valentine’s Day. That would make my heart happy, anyway. This new website is way overdue and hopefully it will provide the opportunity to see more clearly the collections I am working on, the products that are being produced and latest news and information about Sheri Berry Designs.

I have been in the design stage of a number of new collections over the last few weeks, months even, and plan to share sneak peaks of many of them over the next month or so.

Stay tuned, and share the news with your peeps when the nouveau website is up and running. Let’s just refer to that as SherWhere, so when they say “where do I find Sher?” You just direct them to my SherWhere site known as Sheri Berry Designs.

Happy New Year to all. May your nouveau year be filled with many blessings. Sher