One of the very bestest things about owning your own business space/office/showroom that I’ve found it that you can do WHATEVER you want-at least from a design sense. It’s not someone’s home or expectations or limitations you are designing for so you can go couture, catwalk, over the top! Well, at least that’s MY goal!

I am still very inspired by Geishas and the whole Japanese design aesthetic so when it came time to think about a design for a door for this room I knew I had found my girl when looking through a Dover book one day.

This is a 3′ x 8′ door, so she looms quite large! We reworked the design quite a bit, adding some color, body parts and coordinating patterns to her obi.

Here she is in her space, coyly greeting all who enter in the way that only a true geisha can. This design was done with a two layer Modello pattern. For the first I troweled Jasmine Portofino to colorblock in her parasol and part of the obi. When dry I placed the second layer and simple rolled black paint through. VERY IMPORTANT tip: When you are rolling paint through a Modello, seal the pattern first by rolling over it with two coats of a water-based satin varnish, allowing it to dry between coats.

She has friends, and they are available! I was originally wanting to add these other Geishas to different walls in the room, but decided to show some restraint-at least for now. Due to the intricate details they contain, the girls must be cut quite large-6′ high minimum. I imagine them on a large 3-panel screen or on the walls of a salon, spa or fun boutique dressing room walls.

Remember this? It’s done, it’s gorgeous, it’s mine! I won’t bore you with all the layers-the many layers….

We stained for days.

They removed the pattern for hours.

I can hardly wait to decorate. Oh wait! We still have to do the walls and ceilings. Back off, girl.

Let’s just enjoy the uninterrupted pattern for awhile.

We are finally getting round to putting the finishing touches on the Celestial Powder Bath. The thing is, once you start to go “over the top” with surface decoration in a room it becomes a runaway train. With extravagently decorated walls, you simply can’t leave other surfaces untouched. They stick out like an ugly sore thumb. And so, we have moved on to the hardware and the inside of the plain white door. As the back of the door will only really be seen when the facilities are “in use”, I imagine that this will become our most popular bathroom in the building. (Once the door is back on, of course). Here is the design-

And here are the samples to test some possible color variations. I will actually be adding some dark brown areas to really punch up the Celestial Leaf colors.

The Celestial Leaf is one of my new favorites toys! There are nine color variations that the manufacturer in Italy has come up with through a special heat treating process they’ve developed. I seem to keep gravitating to the colors Dawn, Moonbeam and Twilight, which are seen in the samples above, but they are all quite gorgeous!

Your’e familiar with the K.I.S.S method? Keep it simple stupid! That just doesn’t seem to fly around here. Wow, it would have been SO easy to just stencil a nice simple border design around the edges of the hardwood floor in my office. That way, I might actually be WRITING this from a real office instead of setting up a makeshift desk out in the hallway. But no-o-o-o, I had to fall in love with this classic, historical oriental design and the challenge of actually being able to do something with it! We decided to make it work with our Modello Marquetry Masking System, wherein we just weed a portion of the design to start and then remove certain elements for certain colors and apply stain in a sequence of layers. Well, I think it took a month or so just to get the design to work, cut correctly and fit together properly, but Lauren and Miguel came through and guess what? It works!! It’s not actually DONE yet, but I feel so thrilled that we’ve gotten through the hardest part (getting it to work and getting it laid down) that I feel compelled to share…..

Here is the design in all its dizzying glory being puzzle-pieced together and how it looks tonight whilst awaiting the first layer of stain.

Just so you have an idea WHY I even wanted to do this in the first place, here are the color samples I did. Each one was colored and weeded a little differently. Can you see?? Can you find Waldo? If you do, I’ll give you a million dollars. No kidding! 

Our wood surfaces adornment assault continues! I showed you some of the finished landings in an earlier post. Now I’m happy to report that the connecting staircases are finished as well and they are GAWDeous!

My ever-abler new studio assistant, Melissa, did all the actual staining work on the stairs so is now an official “stair master”. You can imagine by looking at all that pattern on all those stairs that this was quite a bit of work!

There are 24 different border patterns used. I was able to set up the colorways first in Adobe Illustrator to try and get some nice balance and contrast over the length of each set of stairs.

The stair treads themselves are alternately stained a dark brown and a warm black and they look great from above as well but it’s the view looking up that is extra special. On a technical note, we have been using Bona’s Traffic for the topcoat and used this on the cork floor as well. It’s a bit tricky and pricey but lays down a lovely soft satin finish that has already proven it’s worth as a very durable topcoat for a commercial setting.

Seeing as how myself, Eric and Aaron are here in Las Vegas at the World of Concrete show I thought this would be an apropos time for this post. Aaron Knight is the go-to guy in the graphic department for our decorative concrete customers. With a fine art degree from Chico State he likes to utilize Adobe Illustrator vector art in many of his own studio projects. When it came time to contemplate what type of design to use on our concrete production room floor I gave Aaron the challenge of coming up with something that would be a little ”different”, reflect what happens in our company, and that would appeal more to men-our primary customers for decorative concrete. 

Aaron was inspired by the work of Jean Tinguely and his scupltural machines and developed a working sketch for our floor after Tinguely’s work.

This became a series of vector art, gears, screws, belts and other assorted ”parts”, that we worked into a “machine” that travels across our production room floor, much as our jobs flow through.

After many hours spent applying the various parts of the Modellos in proper order (see Aaron left) we had Ernie Archuleta (right) come and and spray Concrete Solutions Spray Top in a matter of minutes. This sprayable overlay is ideal for large-scale production as it lays down an even layer of colored concrete very quickly and we almost immediately were able to begin removing the vinyl.

Some shots of various parts of the final machine.  Aaron is a man who puts alot of thought into his life and work and these were his thoughts for this project:

Machines are a refined process. This machine has been abstracted to suggest an openness to new ideas or methods. This site specific design is representative of the way I seen the different people who make up the business of Modello Designs. The design department feeds the machine with ideas. The gears turn in production to realize the idea of the designer. The finished patterns are then sent to the decorative artists who then apply their own unique twist. This machine was not meant to have one refined process, not condemned to a life spent stamping out fenders. This machine is an “idea” machine, capable of bringing together and realizing the ideas of many people.

Lest you think we do nothing but floors around here I offer up this wall finish we completed one of our Operation Decoration classes. This was a modification of one of the finishes I designed for our Italy trip. It is, typically, hard to get a decent shot of the finished wall, but….

This uses the Oikos product called Kreos, which is quite nice for embossing and texures. Even rolling it over a texured background we had very little material creep under the stencil. Here is Christine to demonstrate.

Tired stencils resting after a hard days work.

Sweet smelling bees wax is tinted with mica powder and rolled on. Easy breezy and so fast, it’s blurry.

And it looks like this when it dries. This is our romantic, shabby chic, boho modern (a term I stole from decor8) lobby for Royal Design Studio, which features stencils such as the Grand Damask and our new Florentine Damask which, she says coyly, will be unveiled at a later date. 

Ask me what my prized possession and major obsession is. Okay, I’ll tell you. It’s my paint, design and decorating book collection. I’m a fiend. A hound. An addict. I get my fix on Amazon and that pusher is open 24/7. Do I want to kick this habit? No! Give me more in massive doses. It got a little hairy for a few weeks when my books were all boxed up during the move. I was having major withdrawals for a lack of aimless book browsing and design brain tingling. Well, I got my fix and my babies are back!

They took awhile to organize due to the desire to revisit each one and sidetrack myself yet again.

But I finally made some sense of the assortment and built high stacks.

Ready for their new home and easy access to my wandering eye and aching need.

If you can pardon the dust and disregard the blue tape and plastic I would like to share with you some pics of some of our wood floor projects in the new building. We have two sets of stairs on each side going up to the Mezzanine space that houses the studio and creative offices and I had them both finished off with Maple hardwood flooring. One set will be in the gold, red and black colorway and the other in shades of brown.

A lovely classic Egyptian pattern in progress.

All finished on the left and a Peruvian “rug” on the right.

This is the same design I did in my home but done as another “rug” to fit the small landing. Next up: 48 stair risers each with a different border pattern. Yes, I HAVE created a monster. I’ll tell you what though, all this hard work and running up and down stairs is doing wonders for this ageing bod. There are definitely lots of benefits to be had in hard, physical labor!

Phew! You may have wondered why you haven’t heard from me? On the other hand, maybe you didn’t notice I’ve been MIA for a few weeks. At any rate-I’m ba-a-a-ack. After weeks of major chaos we have settled into only minor chaos after moving both my businesses, Modello Designs and Royal Design Studio into our new building. I have some serious catching up to do in just about every area of life and business, but am starting here with some photos of our very green and black Creative Office. I had drywall beams installed on this ceiling because I had the idea to see just how many different patterns I could graphically represent in one room and thought “what a cool way to break ‘em up”. Also, I wanted to do something graphic and simple (to ME, this is simple). We painted. We plastered (my favorite color of Jasmine Portofino). Thanks Kari!

We picked out lots of pieces of Modello vinyl. Thanks Michelle and Melissa!

We have pattern! I chose to alternate black trellis designs with green intricate floral patterns. To tie it all together, this Transitional Border runs around the room between the beams.

I surely need to get a wide angle lens!

This room isn’t totally ready for it’s closeup as it is still being decorated, but it has a wonderful big black Pottery Barn desk/wall unit and some really cool FLOR tiles on green marmoleum. It’s coming along……

Designs used: Fol All 152, Eas All 105,106,107, Trans Bor 129.