Just for fun today, I typed in Modello in the Flicker search and there appeared a series of photos of a customer’s work-in-progress, The Art of Illusion Studios. You can see the slide show in this Flickr Set.

The artist has used a custom-designed Modello pattern to create a really pretty trompe l’oeil architectural grill over”glass” that looks through to a painted vineyard landscape. Pretty cool!

I have been getting a lot of REALLY great photos lately from our Modello Designs and Royal Design Studio customers. This thrills me to no end, so if you are reading this and sitting on some good photos, PRETTY PLEASE send them along. These photos using our Modello decorative masking patterns are from Gina Wolfrum of Elegant Finishes by Gina. Gina wrote me saying,

“Since adding Modello Designs to my portfolio, my reputation as a decorative artist has been elevated to a new high and I am able to command premium pricing for my Elegant Finishes work. I just can’t say enough. Thank you again for these great products.”

Woo hooo!! Thank YOU Gina! So just to give you an idea of the scope and scale of this project, here are some “in process” shots. This is the Chateau Panel design that was modified to fit the space perfectly. To cover the large area the design had to be broken up into 36 “tiles” which were then applied and matched up over the ceiling surface.

Gina and her team then used a combination of gilding and custom-tinted plaster to create an ornate and elegant design that was custom matched to both the scale and coloration of the interior space. You can see more photos of the process on Gina’s new blog.

I have been working somewhat diligently today on updating the Showcase area on the Modello website with new customer photos and wondering about a couple of things. 1. Why did I put this off to the point where it is now more than 6 months since the last update and the size of the pile is making me grumpy and craving a glass of wine (whine!), and 2. Why don’t I have someone else doing this?. Upon brief consideration I can answer that 1. Because my brain is faster than my hands can keep up with.  I take on too much stuff and 2. I like to keep in touch with what our customers are coming up with in using our designs. Plus I am still a bit of a control freak. At any rate, I thought you might like to enjoy a little eye candy. These projects were done by the team that makes up Custom Design Gallery, Susan and Todd Allemand and Rhonda Canales.

Rhonda, a very talented artist and teacher herself, came and took my class some time ago and they have been incorporating Modellos into many of their residential projects. This grand staircase design features an adaptation of one of our Carpet/Panel patterns, the Chateau.

These finishes are done with a Distressed Gold Inlay technique. It is somewhat amusing to me to note that this Bacchanalian girl, part of a series, was originally design with her breasts showing. Apparently many people were having a hard time with this kind of exposure and all of the girls are now available in a PG format.

Well I am just getting back and getting over the World of Concrete and whatever stomach flu/disease I got in Las Vegas. We had a nice little artsy booth amongst the MEGA booths and earth moving machinery. Actually, I saw a great upsurge in the interest and display of decorative concrete and there were lots of great artisans exhibiting and demoing outside in the Artistry in Concrete area. I WILL post pictures soon!

In the meantime, here is some work of one of our decorative concrete customers, John Carney of Art Over Concrete. John did this beautiful Shanghai Concrete Carpet design using our Modello Dye Stains to both layer on a textural background for this carpet as well as stenciling the design elements in metallic gold. You can see more of John’s work in our concrete Gallery. John is a lovely sounding man from Tennessee who got into decorative concrete about 4 years ago after “retiring” from his career as an optometrist and is now expanding into decorative wall finishes as well.