about me

Welcome

I am an ordinary person living in New York City in a one bedroom apartment with a partner and two parakeets. I am 30 years old and still don't know what I want to do with my life. Based on my background education, supposedly I should be working in a field of accounting/finance. I never have. Not a day. I hated it when I was going to college and I hate it now. Why did I major in it? Only God knows. My passion has always been in the arts, animals and the environment. When I was a kid I used to secretly cry when I saw a homeless dog. I used to get seriously upset when I saw garbage in the otherwise perfectly beautiful scene. In my then naive perceptions of life, I wanted to literally change the world. I was sure that I could do it :-). I wanted to save all the animals, I wanted to persuade people to act consciously, to think about the trees, rivers, nature, pollution and so on. I firmly believed that I could make a difference and so about 12 years ago I went to college to major in the arts and environmental studies. Well, to make a long story short, that didn't work out.

I grew up in the conservative family and according to "family" such empty dreams were not the way to go in life. I was told one has to get a solid profession like a doctor or a lawyer or an accountant. One person COULD NOT make a difference. Looking back on it now, I understand that my family wanted the best for me. They didn't want me to constantly search for a low paying job and be a starving artist. They wanted me to be a professional with a nice steady income. And that is how I became an accountant :-))

After getting my diploma I realized that if I have to work as an accountant, I will hang myself after a day or two. I hung around for a couple of years helping my friend with her business, building things, painting houses for an income, fixing attics and so on. You name it, I did it. I am a very handy person and I love working with my hands, so painting houses and doing construction work beat the hell out of accounting. After that I got into graphic design and attended the School Of Visual Arts. While there, something dawned on me: I will be designing ads to help sell things which people will buy and later dispose and contribute more to the pollution of the environment. I decided to do design only for products that are ENVIRONMENTALLY safe. To be honest, with such strict criteria, work is hard to come by:-)

I run two websites: Lara Berch Tutorials and an environmental site Down With Basics.

I created the tutorial site because it is something I am passionate about and because I am constantly being asked "how do you make this?" "what did you use on here?" "what is this for?" "can I make this too?". I think anyone can make anything with the right motivation. Hopefully you will find my tutorials clear and simple enough to try it yourself.

I am still in the process of building these pages. I will add more stuff as soon as I make more stuff.

Hope you have fun with this site. If you have any questions, suggestions, feedback, do not hesitate to email me. If you like me to do a tutorial that is not listed here, do contact me as well. Comments, suggestions and feedback can also be left in my blog.

BLOG

DO SEND ME THE PICTURES OF THE THINGS YOU DID USING THE TUTORIALS ON THIS SITE. PERHAPS YOU USED A BETTER MEDIUM OR HAVE A MORE INTERSETING IDEA. I WILL POST THEM ON THE SITE FOR OTHERS TO SEE.

Please bear with me as this is a new site and information is being updated. Some sections may still be empty.