Sheri McCulley’s art heroes are mid-century superstars – Betsey Clark, Mary Blair and Charles Schulz. “My inspiration comes from mid-century pop culture, classic stories and sayings, nursery rhymes, and the commercial art of my childhood. I always wanted to create art that could be mass-produced and reach as many people as possible, which is why I went into licensing. I love the idea of a child being as excited to have a new pillowcase with one of my designs on it as I was when I was nine and my mom sewed me a pillowcase out of Holly Hobbie fabric.”
sheri mcculley – chick-a-doodle floret – green
Sheri’s patterns are full of life and activity, and often incorporate animals, people and flowers – and sometimes everything together! They’re a mix of sweet whimsy and bright fun with touches of mid mod and folk, all delivered in palettes of pastel brights.
Working out of her own studio in Overland Park, Kansas, Sheri spreads her creative output between pattern design, embroidery and papercraft, seemingly without drawing breath. {” I tend to lose track of time when I’m designing, and often forget to eat lunch (as well as breakfast, and sometimes dinner)”}. A self-employed illustrator and pattern designer, she licences her art to various manufacturers, as well as selling paper-based products and embroidery patterns directly to consumers on Etsy.
“I truly blend my days and nights and therefore weeks into one creative non-stop process. I love it. I live it. I breathe it. Hopefully the passion I have for it shows in my artwork and craftsmanship.”
sheri mcculley – chick-a-doodle tulips
Like many creatives, it has been a convoluted path to get to the point where she is with her business. After graduating from art college, she got a job teaching graphic design at another college – “a type of work I was pretty well acquainted with since my dad was an art professor. Though I ultimately left higher education and spent time raising my kids, I always kept designing and spent a couple of years at a small private school as an assistant kindergarten teacher / elementary school art teacher. I enjoyed coming up with new art projects for the kids every week, each designed to teach some principle of art.”
Teaching was a joy. “What was interesting to realize is that the overall ratio of kids who actually have an obvious passion and talent for creating is about the same in kindergarteners as college kids. I liked encountering the special kids who have an obvious affinity for art and who surprise you with unique or deep ideas about what they create, even at a very young age.”
sheri mcculley – rainy day flowers
Sheri got serious about her art business about eight years ago, when her and her husband/business manager Tom Seibold first went to the Surtex show in New York and had a booth. They produced fabric, cards, crafting supplies and struck up a few licencing deals, including producing Christmas merchandise for Macys. However, the focus of her business has shifted and grown. Tom told me “While we still do some licensed products with a few long-time manufacturers, Sheri has been shifting into selling her own designs via digital downloads and print-on-demand products (like the Spoonflower fabrics) – all of which offer ongoing sales with no definite end date, as well as her own hand-crafted stationery products, sold via her Etsy shop.”
“In fact, her Etsy shop is an increasingly important part of her workload as orders come in from around the USA as well as other Anglosphere countries – including the UK and Australia. She personally customizes, prints, and die-cuts each piece of stationery, and it was actually her ‘Signature Fragrance’ design that got this business started. She did an announcement in what we now call her “signature cut” style (i.e.: shaped card, not rectangular) for our niece during autumn, 2012.
“The photographer’s random shot of the bride holding the announcement got ‘pinned’ and set off a flurry of requests to have her do it by brides-to-be.”
The change from purely licencing designs to being more hands-on with the stationery through Etsy has been involved and hard work, but ultimately more satisfying. “I like being my own product manager, controlling the designs and quality, and working first-hand with my customers—the brides-to-be.”
sheri mcculley – kitsch-n-mixer utensils
Another aspect of her business is designing a collection of shapes for cut paper, which are sold via digital download to the crafting market. Illustrator files are converted to files that work as cutting paths with digital paper cutters like the Silhouette (/CraftRobo) or any digital cutter that can connect to a PC (i.e.: not the ones that use designs pre-loaded on cartridges). Each collection includes a series of floral elements that can be selected and cut on demand for specific projects (you can find out more about her digital files here).
Being an avid collector of vintage textiles and furniture since she was in college has resulted in a home full of wonderful vintage, including furniture that she and her husband Tom have refurbished. More importantly, her textile collection – some of it dating back to the 1930s – was the inspiration for turning some of her own illustrations into embroidery patterns. Always charmed by the “Aunt Martha” transfers that had been used by American housewives for generations to add personality to aprons and dishcloths, Sheri saw the resurgence in hand embroidery a few years ago, and it all just clicked.
sheri mcculley – tinker talk
sheri mcculley – tinkers toys
sheri mcculley – tinker thinker
Despite all these creative endeavours, Sheri doesn’t really even consider herself a ‘crafter’. “I grew up creating art of all types and started embroidering at a young age; although these days, my most craft-like activity is papercrafting, such as the items I design and prototype for the craft art patterns (and print-and-cut downloads) I sell on LetteringDelights.com, and the embroidery patterns sold on Etsy.”
sheri mcculley – digital papercuts
sheri mcculley – signature frangrance wedding stationery
“You could say I’m inspired more by designing the elements behind the craft, and giving crafters the pieces that will motivate them to create.”
You can find more of Sheri’s patterns in her Spoonflower store sheri_mcculley; more about what she’s up to on her blog; and you can also find her embroidery patterns as well as her beautiful wedding stationery in her Etsy store, sherimcculley.etsy.com.