I had the great pleasure of meeting and lunching with one of our favorite customers (and a Featured Artist in Modello by Design) on Friday: Robbie Calvo.

Robbie was on the West coast for meetings in LA regarding his new design show “pitch” to the decorating networks. We got to see the 5 minute piece that showcases his concept and creative abilities. I truly don’t have time to watch many of these shows (and frankly they all tend to look the same) but Robbie’s is definitely a “cut above” in taste, style, and approach to most of the shows out there. An accomplished musician, he incorporates his composing abilities into his room design, focusing first on the rythm (the foundation walls, floors, etc), then the harmony (main pieces like furnture) and finally the melody (accessories and assorted fluff). During the process, he also composes a short piece of music to compliment the room design. It is REALLY good!
 

Shown above is the room that was used for the decoration in “the pitch” and, let me tell you, it looks even better on film.

Robbie has been so generous to create a wonderful page on his website talking about his association with Modello Designs and we are happy to sponsor his success AND his upcoming show. He’s a truly talented and humble person who deserves all the success that will be coming his way. I can’t wait to watch more!

The paint is barely dry and I’m a million miles away from getting caught up with myself but it’s on to ANOTHER big project. Bring it on! I love living a life full of creative tension and unrealistic expectations (of myself, mainly).

I just posted the details of the next Art of Living project over on the Art of Living Blog. Please check it out. Barb and I are super excited. We’re going UPTOWN!

Oh-and check back for more on Marrakech here. I have posts stacked up like the planes at JFK (leaving on Friday night for an international flight)

Get your sea legs and Dramamine ready, we’re going for a cruise! My lovely friends Susan and Todd Allemand from Out of This World Finishes in Seattle are hosting the first annual Artisan’s on the Water August evening dinner cruise.

Mix dining, dancing and imbibing with artistic demonstrations from namey “name” artisans and HUGE prize giveaways and what do you get? One rockin evening, that’s what! Oh, but hurry, you must get your tickets before May 20th to take advantage of discounted registraton.

We get so inspired from seeing the photos that our customers send back to us showing how they have utilized our Modello patterns in artful applications! A picture IS worth a thousand words. I know that our customer base of professional decorative artisans get a lot of great ideas by looking at other artist’s work and also how important it is to be able to show a potential client how a design will look in a real-life setting-in living color. And so, last month we announced that we will be publishing an inspirational book entitled Modello by Design, Inspiring Interiors from Artist’s Portfolios. We asked our customers to submit photos of some of their favorite projects which we will be compiling for a book to be released in late July. I love the idea of being able to get our talented customers “in print” while giving them a tool to spark their imagination and entice their clients.

Cover photo by Terri Riesenman.

Marquetry floor by JoAnn Kingsbury.

Fabulous ceiling by Nichole Blackburn.

Awesome niche by Dee Ann O’Neal.

The photos are still coming in! The deadline for submission for Volume 1 is April 31 so if you are out there and sitting on some great work we’d love to see it! Soon!! Here’s the skinny on how to submit.

One of my businesses is Modello Designs. I started this as an offshoot business 4.5 years ago from my original company Royal Design Studio, which specializes in elegant designer stencils for interior decorating. Rather than a reusable,mylar stencil Modellos are one-time-use decorative masking patterns (masking stencils!). They have some advantages over stencils for certain types of designs; can go very large, very intricate, continuous pattern, positive or negative image, allow for development of  new decorative techniques, can be custom-sized and cut to order, and much more.

We now offer 1,000’s of patterns and are constantly developing more, so a static, bound catalog just doesn’t work because it becomes out of date very quickly. This Spring, we will be introducing our brand new, easily update-able design binder, with a new look that really showcases what we are all about: Pattern and design!

Lauren came up with this great (I think) paisley concept after cruising many design blogs such as decor8 and print and pattern and being inspired by the rich paisley patterns that are popping up (again). We have filled the shapes with some of our favorite designs and I think the end result is colorful, unique and quite fetching….

Well, we made it through our 14th SALI convention. Attendance was down, but it was still a great show and always great to touch base with all my friends in “the biz”, raise a few, compare notes and admire everyone’s work. We actually got into the city one day and ate at a great new place on Union St. call Palmetto. A friend had suggested Beetlenut (which looked very interesting) but the group was more in the mood for good meditteranean food-and it was!

Here are Lauren, Eric and Brandi in the booth. I think none of them was too comfortable having their picture taken, but they are smiling broadly inside.

Kari was a big help modeling Designamour tee shirts and helping with our design instruction of gilding Modello Transitional Borders.

Just across the aisle, my friend Shauna Gallagher from Artistic Living Studio was inspired by our Dragonfly wall treatment when she did this raised plaster piece. She actually pipes hot mud through a cake decorator and then carves it. She does some amazing ceiling treatments with this technique and offers classes in her Sacremento studio.

Well, that’s it! I’m not the best shutterbug so am quite proud that I actually remembered to snap a few. Can’t wait to visit Charleston, SC for the convention next July! Maybe I will see you there….

I ALWAYS enjoy getting photos that show how customers have used our stencil and masking designs, but one of my alltime faves has to be Patti Halstead. She just seems to have a way of turning the design drama-meter up a few notches-plus she gets GREAT photos of her work.

In most businesses, but especially this one, it’s all about making a strong, visual statement. Patti has been able to set herself apart with her unique style, sophisticated marketing and desire to be different. You can see more of her work at her online gallery.

She has recently moved her business direction to a more commercial focus, which includes designing and executing exciting public spaces for several upcoming resort projects, and is offering the opportunity for some Signature Training. You will have the opportunity to live on the beach for a week, while learning and executing advanced-level architectural finishes in a project team environment.

It provides a great way to enhance your portfolio, broaden your design horizons and gain experience working in the resort design business. Modello Designs is a sponsor of this event and I can’t wait to see what Patti comes up with!

Continuing from the previous post-

I am happy to say that Modello Designs has grown into a successful, growing business. We started off slowly the first couple of years and were kind of learning and improvising as we went along. While there were a few companies, such as Say What, that had been cutting custom lettering from vinyl, no one had developed the idea of a business that would/could cut decorative patterns (either custom or from a catalog) from vinyl. In my initial research, all I could find as potential “business models” were some companies that cut designs for the etched glass industry and for concrete sandblasting.

Even though I thought Modellos were the best thing to come along since triple lattes, there was much more resistance than I expected at first, esp. to the “one-time-use” aspect. Thanks to the support, though, of the fabulous customer base I had from Royal Design Studio and many other close and supportive business associates in the decorative painting industry, Modello decorative masking patterns are now becoming an industry staple. BTW the word Modello translates in Italian to “pattern, or “I model”. Because it has become so commonly used and associated with the medium and application, we have just recently received notification that we have the official registration on the wordmark, as well as our logo!

While I have many people to thank for the success of the past three years, I have to put the great team of people that make up Modello Designs at the top of the list. We have such a dedicated and talented staff of people that work so well together I feel very blessed and thankful and appreciate the many customers who have gone out of their way to sing their praises to me!

From left to right: Elizabeth (custom design), Eric (operations manager), Aaron (graphics/customer service), Lauren (layout graphics, my creative assistant), Brandi (graphics/customer service), Dawn (graphics/customer service), Jerome (shipping/print manager), Tony (production manager) and Juan (production assistant)

I WOULD have liked to have gotten a good company photo at our recent Christmas wine tasting or Chargers tailgate party, but everyone was having a little too much fun to think about it

This month we are celebrating finishing up our third year at Modello Designs. This business developed out of my desire to create and offer a new medium and new options for decorative painters to apply pattern and design in their projects-and a new creative “toy” for myself to play with. Expanding on the techniques and applications developed over the years through the traditional stenciling of Royal Design Studio, the Decorative Masking Pattern medium (as we have named it), has opened up a whole new world that keeps exponentially expanding! Cutting designs from one-time-use vinyl allows for many additional options: Working on the positive or negative space, incorporating designs not possible or practical with a traditional stencil, and producing patterns “on demand” to any size (including very LARGE scale).

This photo montage is from the Showcase area of the website and features some of the finishes that decorate our offices as well as the talents of our customers. It is really wonderfully fulfilling to see an idea transformed to a design that transforms a room or surface in the hands of a creative artisan. Please keep those pictures coming! I hope to get a whole new round of customer artwork up on the Modello site in the next week or so.