I’m still a bit out of it from my Spain/Morocco trip-Trying to catch up with new business, reintroduce myself to ongoing projects and organize my trip photos on flickr so I can share them in some semblance of order. Why does everything take so long? Oh yeah, it must be that you can/should add titles, descriptions and tags now to all your photos. That on top of my need to crop each one at the exact same size, adjust the “curves” because I can, etc. in Photoshop. Almost there.

Meanwhile, I found out by linking back through my incoming links from The Crafty Cameleon in California (thank you and love your sand art!) that this blog was listed on House Beautiful’s website under their “sites we love” area. How cool is that!!!! I had no clue. Not surprising. I just love this blogging stuff….

World Wide Web isn’t a phrase you hear bandied about much this days. Being vocally lazy, most of us just call it “the web” or “the net”. I have to share a bit of Google research with you: Did you realize that the internet has only been available to the general public since the early 90’s and search engines since the mid 90’s? Holy cow! How DID we manage?! Anyway, I just wanted to share how pleased I am that this blog is getting some really nice exposure around the WWW-thanks largely in part to Maryam’s very cool post about our upcoming project at Peacock Pavilions. Maryam is quite the blog star (deservadly so!) and some of the images from her post got picked up here and here. The latter one is in French, no less. Ooh la la! Thank you Maryam, for letting me hang on to your lovely coattails a bit!

As any blogger knows, the key to getting people to actually drop by “your place” in this vast web universe is to be fortunate to have people that link to you through their blogs, either through post links or blogrolls. Besides Maryam, here are some recent incoming links from some REALLY nice blogs that are showing up on my dashboard. Back at ya’ and big thank you to:

The Crafty Cameleon

Eye Candy

Taddie Tales

Bari J

Garay Artisans

and Room Service. I don’t even know what she said, but I’m hoping is was good

It was six years ago this week that my fiance Eric and I had our first date. This came after eight weeks of hooking up (on the dance floor, that is!). You see, we met at a Argenting tango milonga, a social tango dance. The normal tango etiquette is to dance 3 or so songs with the same partner. Our first dance lasted fifteen songs. Need I say more?

The photo above right shows me dancing with another man, Eric’s friend Jann. One of the lovely things about tango, ladies, is that you can be in 10 or more different men’s arms in a single night without compromising your honor or reputation.

I am sorry to say that we don’t dance much anymore. Our work consumes us, and additonally, I have developed arthritis in my large toe joints, undoubtedly compounded by what used to be a 4 night a week dance habit. I pretty much live in MBTs and my feet get really angry at me when I try to shove them into anything with a heel.

We are going to celebrate this Valentines Day, though, by going back to our romantic roots. Happy Valentines Day, Sweetie! 

PS If you want to see some really amazing “real” tango, here are some videos by the Argentine couple I most enjoyed taking classes from, Fernand Ghi and Guillermo Merlo. 

Happy Halloween from the staff at Modello Designs.

Guess who won the costume contest?

  

Boun Giorno! I just wanted to thank you all for visiting over the last couple of weeks while I have been MIA in Italy and now in Dallas. I took my laptop and camera to Italy with visions of posting on a somewhat regular basis, but neglected to include the wire that connects camera to computer and, truthfully, it was great to take a vacation from internet and email obligations!!

I will be “back at it”, a lot of “it,” in the coming week but just wanted to let you know that everthing is fine with my family, friends and home in San Diego (thank goodness!)

Our Italy trip was full of amazing art, food, wine and adventures but they all pale to the specialness of an evening in Montalcino where Eric surprised me with a beautiful ring and sweet proposal of marriage. Eric is the mystery man that I am with in my blog photo. We met almost six years ago when he asked me to dance at a milonga and the standard two to three polite dances turned into 15 dances in a row. I am feeling very blessed with a complete current life and an exciting and constantly evolving future full of love and passionate pursuits!

Well since I have stated that this blog is about all manner of surface decoration, I thought it would be appropriate to post this then I got an email this morning from Heather Moss with all these crazy cat photos attached. I imagine it is making the rounds so you may have seen it?

Apparently there is this little Painted Catssubculture in our society, balanced by the obligatory counter-revolution of those outraged by the use of cats as canvas. If you want to jump into the fray, check out the Why Paint Cats website.

I though people were a bit crazy when willing to pay $40 for a doggie sweater. That pales in comparison to the reported $15,000 that some are willing to pay for their cat paintings (with touchups every three mos.) I think I prefer my pets au naturale. How about you?

An “amour” is a love affair, which I find highly appropriate for my relationship with design as I am basically obsessed with looking at it, thinking about it and somehow attempting to create it most of my waking hours.

So, for my personal blog I wanted to design something that looked, well, personal! My most recent creative muse has been kimono art and I have been really inspired by the Japanese design aesthetic in many different ways. I also wanted to design a blog that didn’t look like a typical blog and again Wordpress provides that option. Plus, something really cool it that there is a “theme switcher” option with Wordpress, so you can actually have multiple themes that reader and viewers can select from and the whole blog changes like that! Adding additional themes for this blog are 146 on my list of things to do, so it won’t be happening any time too soon, but someday…..

While web researching, I came across a really pretty site that I found both unique and inspiring, Jeux de Maux. It’s French, naturally!

A few clicks later and there are more beautiful blog sites to see here Dotclear. You have to scroll down the page and on the right hand side there is a Themes drop-down menu. Just select different themes to create a completely different way to view the blog. Very cool! Here is just one view.

Anyway, just wanted to share that. Like all self-doubting artists, I think that this site could definitely use a few more tweaks but finally figured that I just needed to get it going and will get back to it when I am down to 146 on the list.

I found it a little overwhelming when I started looking at blogging options. While is seems that the majority of blogs are on Blogger or Typepad I decided that I really liked Wordpress. You can set up your own domain, there is a lot of flexibility in the design and, most importantly, I loved the fact that it has been created, not by a corporation, but by an online community of people who are passionate about their “art”.

To make it harder on myself, I wanted to set up not one blog site, but two; one for myself and one for the Art of Living project I have begun in partnership with Barb Skivington of Faux Works Studio. For days, I researched what the heck a blog was and browsed through dozens of sites and the available theme pages. There are hundreds that have already been designed by programmers all over the world. You can REALLY get lost in this stuff-I was lost quite a few times!!

I kept going back, though, to really clean looking themes by headsetoptions, finally settled on “Easy White” for the Art of Living blog and started working with my in-house graphic artist Lauren on the header and footer. I REALLY like the way it turned out, with the use of color along with B/W photography. Everytime I go to the site it makes me feel good!

Wow. It’s hard to believe that just a few short months ago I thought blogs were primarily the domain of political left and right wingers. Then, on a flight back from an East coast project, I picked up a Newsweek magazine that had a piece on the new blog phenomenon. What really caught my attention was a little reference to a popular design blog called designsponge. Fortunately, for once I remembered to fish the magazine out of the seat pocket in front of me before debarking and got on designsponge pretty much the minute I walked in the door.

A couple of hours later my “cheeks” are numb, my eyes are glazed over and I am SO EXCITED to have fallen down this wonderful rabbit hole and be exposed to the endless maze of blogs that have been birthed by thoughtful, articulate, intelligent, inspiring, sharing and massively creative people. There are blogs covering every facet of design and home decoration, 21st century “crafting”, illustration, pattern, interior design and LOTS of visual eye candy.

I’m ecstatic, I’m addicted and, of course, I want to create one! I love design, I LIVE design everyday and my friends and family seem to think I am growing roots in front of my computer anyway so what’s the harm in another project, right?

One thing that becomes obvious very quickly is that most of the women (and some men) who have started their own popular blogs are young, hip and highly fashionable. Hmmm, I am none of those things BUT I do know quite a bit about a very specific area of design: Designing decorative patterns and finishes for surface decoration. 

So-after much fussing and tweaking, here is my own personal design blog where I can talk about my projects, share my inspiration and current creative muses and hopefully contribute something to the great web universe!