Wow! I have been SO busy in the studio. I have so much to share and so little time! I was just reworking some of the samples for our Italy trip and feeling very happy with the results so I want to share! One of the finishes we will do is meant to replicate some of the gorgeousl woven silk fabrics found at Antico Setificio Fiorentino.

This one is done with Oikos’ Kreos material, which is much like a really thick, somewhat gritty paint. It’s fabulous for creating highly textured looks. For this I troweled on the lighter color and then stria’d it with their Corduroy tool (which resembles really cheap Astroturf). It works better than anything I’ve tried before for creating a slightly irregular stria with lots of nice “nubs”. Once dry I used a stencil and was actually able to roll on the darker color through the stencil and stria through it with a brush without pushing the product under the stencil-even over a textured surface. You really can’t see it well in the photo, but the finishing touch is using two different colors of mica-tinted Bee’s Wax (from Kathy Carroll) and manipulating them a bit.

I wanted to rework the Sgraffito finish done earlier for another room and found that the combination of using a 10mil Modello for the main pattern and just a bit of “scratching” with a sharp tool for the vein details makes it look like I was scratching and carving all day-not! I LOVE the Oikos Travertino texture on the background on this one.

Most of the finishes we will be doing in Alison’s studio need to be kept fairly simple and neutral, as they will serve as backdrops for her own beautiful handpainted and gilded furniture pieces. This Oikos Lime Wash (actually it’s called Pittura Calce Verona) with some handpainted accents will hopefully fill that bill. All of these products can be ordered through Kathy’s site here.

This one uses Safra lime plasters from the School of Italian Plasters and is a sample to test the technique for some cartouche designs what will go around a door and as a frame for artwork. It is a Marmorino base with Calcenova Arredo through the Modello. I have not done much personally with lime plasters in the past, but after the last week, I think I am hooked! Now, to tackle some real walls…..

Lest you think I have abandoned my kimono and Japanese design obsession, fear not! I have written previously about being asked to participate in an upcoming mural compilation book that my friend Gary Lord is doing. Well, seems I promised the editor some “new” mural photos for the gallery section a few months ago and she suddenly surprised me by wanting to collect on that commitment!?!? If the sign of a true artistic soul is to produce under pressure, then my hand is held high. Sign me up!

I decided to try a different kind of “mural”. This one is on canvas (typically) but the Roclon canvas is cut into the shape of a hanging kimono. Everytime I have picked it up I have always gone back to this one page in the book,Kimono, Vanishing Tradition, to look at this lovely wedding kimono shown above.

The crunch-time mural commitment finally gave me the opportunity to reinterpret it using a series of stencils from our Royal Design Studio Kimono Collection.

I used Shimmerstone (a metallic plaster) as the base and to do the embossed stenciling over the glazed green area. I then simply used different colors of Modern Masters Metallic paints to add the colors through the stencils to the dried embossed designs. It is a much softer look than the original, and not quite as detailed, but I was pretty pleased with the outcome and now have something new to hang on the walls at the new building. The photography is by Gary Conaughton.

In every SkimStone class I teach we do a Modello/SkimStone Concrete Carpet design together. We should all be so lucky to have this many sets of hands working on one project! Imagine how much design could get done. This class worked especially well together!

This photo dramatically shows the effect of the final toning layer, troweled on VERY tight and thin,  to create a beautiful unifying and aging effect in the Ibiza Carpet design.

The toning layer enhances the look of really old Encaustic tiles, which is something that I have been searching all over the web about and drooling over all the possible color and design combinations. We have so many patterns that work well for that look, I can’t wait to get into the new building and get to troweling!

I am trying to catch up a bit here after teaching back to back classes. They were both full of great and fun students. We had 6 that stayed the week and came to both sessions. I wanted to share some sample from the SkimStone class because they are just so darn cool. SkimStone is concrete and countertop resurfacing product that I have been using quite a bit for the last few year. You can see more examples of it in the Floor Gallery and some of the posts I’ve done on my patio projects. It is super easy to use and to create great decorative effects as sit trowels much like a Venetian plaster and you can layer the colors, make them more opaque, more translucent, more textured, etc.

I shot photos of 4 samples done by different students of the Italian allover tile design (OrnAll 107) sample that we did. These are 2′ x 2′ boards. Each one shows a little different use of color. The one on the lower left started as a “mistake” because she removed the wrong part of the pattern on one step, but it actually turned out the prettiest. In art, and life I suppose, mistakes can be huge opportunities to take you in a much better direction!

When I wrote earlier on this blog about the amazing examples of Sgraffito that can be seen on facades around Florence I was amazed at the level of detail and craftsmanship. After attempting this technique at Kathy Carroll’s place in Chicago for a sample for our Italy project at Alison’s Florence studio I am completely humbled and ever more awestruck!

I kid you not, it took over an hour to scratch out the small amount of design you see on each of these boards. Each! The lime plasters were applied over a Travertino basecoat. While still wet, we stenciled the design lightly to provide the pattern and then removed it in those areas to reveal the basecoat using a sharp pick and clay carving tools. I DO like the effect of the one on the right where we did the Sgraffito technique on the lower half and used the stencil to emboss the plaster on the upper part. I am certain we will take the easy way out on this and to a “faux” sgraffito finish using a Modello masking pattern for the positive/negative effect!

This one is just stenciled. A pretty look as well!

Jali designs are something that I have seen popping up here and there lately.  “Jali” means net or latticework in Hindustani and the intricate designs were generally carved in sandstone, and later, in wood. They were and are used extensively in Islamic architecture and even more so in Indian architecture. The carved stone “screens” were used architecturally as window and door coverings, screens and to decorate facades. The beautiful graphic photos shown here are from artist Andrew Senior’s photo gallery.

We have developed quite a few Jali designs into Modello patterns recently. Until recently, I was clueless as to their origin-I just loved the designs. Being a little more educated now, I love them even more! These would be great to emboss plasters through to create a slight relief that could imitate the look of real carved sandstone, but they would be equally lovely as allover floor or wall patterns or painted onto a tabletop.

I just spent the weekend in the Chicago area at my friend Kathy Carroll’s studio, The Chicago Institute of Fine Finishes. Kathy was so kind to invite me there to help familiarize me with the Oikos product line and allow me to make samples for our upcoming Italy trip using those products. You see, we’ve decided to use Italian plasters, available in Florence, for our projects there and Oikos is one of the largest decorative coatings manufacturers there in Italy.

Not only did she provide me with her space and product knowledge, Kathy even blessed me with her two EXTREMELY good assistants Jennifer and Jenna, who were kept busy custom tinting quarts of Travertino, Marmorino and Veltura alla Calce for me to test out techniques and color palettes. They are shipping the samples back to me this week, so I will photo and post them later this week. Meanwhile, here are some photos from Kathy’s studio.

Me playing/working and me and Kathy trying to get a good photo of the both of us before I rushed off to catch a plane. We gave up after 5 tries!

Some of Kathy’s cool Oikos plaster samples I found around her studio. Kathy carries a wide range of products and teaches classes on all of them! www.fauxbykathy.com.

So the “Old World” look is out in some circles, but I still can’t help partake in the joys of what you can create with a trowel and some type of plaster product. It’s especially fun to work with the “touch” of the trowel (and your arm that is attached to it) to layer materials that create the look of passing time.

This finish uses our Acanthus Damask stencil design and is troweled through with a mix of paint and joint compound in various colors and layers. The fun thing is that you have to apply it “not perfectly” so there is lots of wriggle room. You don’t want to get too sloppy but…

This is my new favorite wall finish. I just have a thing for embossed leather looks. This is the Folk Flower Allover stencil that is embossed and then buried with paint, Venetian Plaster, stain and wax. Both of these finishes will be incorporated into an Extraordinary Stenciled Effects class here a the studio starting in December-the first one in a few years!

I’m SO happy as we shipped the crate out to the SALI show today and that stress and mess is DONE! Somehow, even though we “cut back” there was still a big pile of stuff that had to go ON TOP of the crate as it wouldn’t fit inside. Here are few more new ‘babies” that went off in the crate for display next week.

I am loving these fresh graphic looks that are definitely a current trend. It’s nice to be able to adapt some old and new stencil designs so easily to this just by changing the colors and painting techniques used. The one on the left uses our Japanese Flower Garden with String of Pearls as stems. The other ones all combine our Modello Silhouette patterns with stencils for “pattern in pattern” look. For the one above we used 4′ tall flowers, painted them in with latex paint and filled them with delicated little allover designs like our Lacy Leaves, Lovely Lace and more.

Above left, we done more of that with some new Dragonfly Modellos. These will all be part of our new “Silhouette and Stencils” series. Above right uses a Transitional Border to create the valance and that was filled the Allover Brocade over a background of a repeated Ornamental Cartouche. We have been having some kind of stenciling fun, let me tell you!

Wow, I feel just awful that I haven’t posted in so long. You see, it’s SALI time. SALI is the Stencil Artisan’s League Convention that happens every summer around this time and causes me to inflict major stress on myself because I have to live up to or exceed last year’s booth display which also caused major stress from having to live up the previous year and so on down the years for about 14 of them now. Every year I say “I’m not going to go all out” and then a few weeks before I get this major creative bug and make myself crazy/exhausted/happy that I got it out of my sytem. The good news is I have a lot of photos to post here for the next week or so! Starting with:

  

These fun, bright graphic designs for kids or tweens or whoever else can handle the stimulation of a lot of color and pattern. More and more people, I think! The one on the left reminds me of some funky outfit I might have worn as a preteen in the late 60’s. It uses our Foliate Damask Allover, Wicker and Half Daisy Chain. The one on the right was fun because I used a “fingerpainting” technique in the wet glaze to create the random scrolling pattern and then we stenciled the Japanese Flower Garden B series in bright pink, black and white. They go quite nicely together, dont they? I think these would be really fun finishes to do in a boutique dressing room for some reason….