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.