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.

It’s done! I had nightmares that something would go horribly wrong and my million dollar cork floor would get ruined somehow. Well, it didn’t REALLY cost a million dollars, but it definitely wasn’t cheap and we had another big chunk invested in labor and materials, AND there have been quite a few BIG things going awry lately, BUT I think we are safe. Knock wood.

Once we got the whole assembly line thing down we were cranking out 35 tiles (on a good day). Richard and Michelle from our staff are pulling out the last pieces of the pattern to ready them for the final stenciled layer.

Here the trusty installers are pressing the last tiles into place. Good thing THEY were good as we used all 120 tiles that we made. Phew!

If you’ve never walked on a cork floor, let me tell you it’s heaven. Especially when all your other floors are concrete. It feels like you just put brand new gel inserts in your shoes! I’m so in love, I’ve ordered some more for my home office floor where I think I will do a very large “stained-in-place” meandering cherry blossom branch. Then we will see how it holds up to my greyhound’s toenails.

Mmmm. Mmmm.

We did a SkimStone “carpet” to finish of the Gingko Leaf office, using Modello EasAll104 in the center. I LOVE this trellis pattern. Originally, there was to be an elaborate decorative border overlaid in the raspberry outer border but we liked the relatively simplicity so much as this point we decided to stop here. With everything already going on in the room and yet more just outside the door, I think it was a good call!

This shows how it relates in size, scale and color to the wall finish. I custom-tinted the green on the floor to match the paint color on the wall using their French Mint and Yellowstone colors. It’s almost spot on. Just so’s you know, there is all that empty space at the bottom of the wall because it will be filled up with a row of filing cabinets. Sigh.

I thought it was going to be so great having all these new building projects to post on this blog. Problem is, I’m so busy with the projects and dealing with our move-in deadline I can’t seem to find much time to post! With that excuse out of the way, here’s a room that’s almost done that uses the new Celestial Leaf we are carrying. It is WAY cool!

We actually started the first layer back during our Metallic Wall Finishes class. Carol and Cathy are putting the Celestial Leaf on randomly after we troweled on two colors of Lusterstone. The randomness comes from sponging on the gold leaf size. A few weeks later I got back in there and troweled some more layers of Lusterstone on to somewhat “bury” the leaf and then applied the first Modello layers (EasMot 118/119 cut in two layers).

We use three different colors of the Celestial Leaf: Dawn, Moonbeam and Twilight. This new leaf comes from Italy and they have developed a treatment process for the composition gold leaf that creates wonderful, subtle color variations. Shown here are Twilight and Moonbeam.

The second layer of Modellos is applied right over the first to make it easy to line up, sized again and more leaf applied in a contrasting color. This final design design on the right shows a Moonbeam and Twilight combo. It’s kind of unusual that the first layer of leaf actually blushes through the second a bit. I’ll be toning and sealing with a thin layer of Rich Brown Stain and Seal and then need to figure out something wonderful for the bottom half of the wall to cover up the horrid looking laminate.

OK, I’ll admit it. I am totally and irretrievably obsessed with repetitive patterns: How to translate them onto different surfaces, how to apply them with different mediums, how to make them work, and how to make all of this profitable for my customers and, yes, me! I WOULD like to retire someday, preferably to a villa/vineyard in central Italy. SO, I started messing around with this simple and brilliantly efficient Modello Marquetry Masking System for applying pattern to wood and other porous surfaces (see the cork below) and think it’s so slick that I’ve filed a patent on the process.

It’s all still a bit “in the works”, like everything else in my life, but I wanted to share these first samples with you. I was in a rush to find wood and get it cut, so settled on Oak plywood (bleech!). The grain of the wood fights with some of the patterns but you get the idea.

I’ve had a bunch of unfinished maple flooring laid down at the new building (see what I did at my house here), and some large unfinished birch doors, so will have some really nice surfaces to decorate. Now, to pick out which patterns……

Two down, 118 more to go.

One of the projects in our new building that I am most excited about is doing this stained cork floor, because 1) I think it is truly unique, and 2) I think it is going to look really, really cool, and 3) Cork flooring is hot! We had to wait 4 mos. for the unfinished cork tiles to arrive on a slow boat from China (seriously) so now have to get them done pronto so they can be installed before the furniture arrives.

I saw this pattern in the HUGE, absolutely gorgeous Taschen book, The World of Ornament and was wierdly drawn to it. It’s not my usual design crush and it feels fun to try something completely different. We are using water-based stains with Modellos and stencils to complete the pattern on each tile. Once it’s installed, I’ll add some umber colorant to the sealer to knock it back a bit.  Just a bit. Fun, huh? I’m just not sure I can bear to let people walk on it!