Designer of the Month: Pandora Philipp

I love Pandora's decorating because she thinks outside the box, as you can see in the pictures below of the Rose Cottage -- she has not only decorated it with an exciting sense of eclectic style and bold color, but she remodeled the cottage to suit her needs. She has added two baths, a nursery, an art room, and yes, a room for her dogs! Her property has a boat house and tree house and interesting things to interact with everywhere. It looks fabulous! She says:

"I buy what I like and then build around it ... I like unique, lots of people just buy what they see out and leave it, you need to make it comfortable for yourself. I just put out what I like, not what others think I should, I have to live here.... lol!"

Pandora always has a clear vision of what she wants, and I love working with her to modify things to match that vision. That's a lot of fun for me, and very rewarding also to see the final creation. I supply the artist with the tools and materials, but it is the artist who makes the final art work, and I love seeing that.

Pandora welcomes anyone to come see her home here. If she is home, just IM her to let her know you want to take a peek. She also has several shops -- clothes, flower arrangements, and contemporary furnishings-- which can be found at her mall here.

My new 18c English cottage! Below are pics and a description from the notecard.












It has:

* detachable 4 linked columns,
* a detachable patio with pool and pool water,
* a detachable front walk with planters.

Also rezzed along with the house are copyable and modifiable:

* ceiling fans,
* hanging light fixture,
* planters with rose bushes,
* rose bushes,
* sculpted open-close curtains (lace pattern and solid
* open-close privacy shutters.
* security orb

DESIGNER OF THE MONTH -- GIANCARLO TAKACS

Two of my favorite customers are Giancarlo Takacs and Ryker Infinity, who together have built the gorgeous and very popular Costa Rica sims -- and have absolutely stunning taste in furnishings. I asked Giancarlo to be this month's Designer of the Month, and you will see why in the pics here (read more about Costa Rica Sims at www.costaricasims.com). I asked Giancarlo to tell me something about how he went about creating his masterpiece"


"For many, the first thing that comes to mind when they hear Costa Rica is beautiful beaches. And that is true, Costa Rica has some of the most gorgeous beaches in the world, but the country also has many other environments -- every form of terrain, wildlife, and plant growth that can possibly survive in a tropical climate.

Being the estate CEO of the Costa Rica Sims, I am aware that the beach environment is the most popular among SL residents and I have designed over 60 sims with a beach theme. My partner, Ryker, and I were thinking for quite some time about moving somewhere else within our estate. But while he is more of a city dweller, I have always loved the country and honestly I was growing tired of the beach scene -- in RL Costa Rica one of my favorite places is the province of Heredia. This inland province is known for its beautiful mountains, magnificent waterfalls, cloud forests, and manor homes.

One day while talking to a fellow resident about the idea I had for our country estate, he recomended Cierra Anatine, owner of Kismet. I went there and right away fell in love with the homes. Now the hard task had just begun. How do you take a city dweller to the country? Later that morning, Ryker came online and I asked him to come to where I was, because I wanted to show him something, but I needed him to keep an open mind.

When he teleported to Tir Na Kismet sim, right away I explained what I had in mind for our new home and to my surprise, my city dweller was very happy to move to the country!

One of our greatest joys in SL as a couple is to create projects together. In the 17 months we have been together we have seen our estate grow from 24 sims, to over 60 today. One of our “projects” we were working prior to our house was furnishing of our new welcome center. The Costa Rica Sims is a brand known in Second Life for offering the best of the best and that is how we discovered Pamela Galli and La Galleria. We used her beautiful furniture for our new welcome center and loved it so much there was no doubt we were going to use her designs for our home. We really loved the traditional elegance of her furnishings, her impeccable taste in textures, and exceptional sense of scale and proportion. This made her designs versatile for mixing and matching to fit different rooms, create compelling ambiance, and set distinct moods for various living spaces. In the end, we were able to achieve a relaxed, yet still refined and luxurious retreat, surrounded by natural beauty."

La Galleria Designer of the Month: Cocoa Jewell

The La Galleria Designer of the Month is Cocoa Jewell, CEO of Creative Jewell and Jewell Enterprise, who has taken her love for interior and landscape design and turned it into a business. Below you will see pics of some of her designs, in which she blends a variety of styles into a warm and inviting environment. Cocoa makes every effort to personally build and design her gardens and interiors to reflect her clients' tastes. Whether it's warmth and home....or peace and serenity, Cocoal builds and designs according to her clients' needs and desires.

Feel free to IM her to set up a free intial consultation. You can view more examples of her designs at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Christal/195.139.21.

Just because it's pretty....

And also so I get one more post in before the end of June!

I have several of these sofa sets, in different colors. There is a dark version with darker shading and the lighter version you see here. All are tintable. I like to play around with the colors and pillow colors, matching the rugs. Each has several sit animations in each cushion, plus the sofa has MLP. The sofas are $299 and the loveseats $199.

Win an Apartment Full of La Galleria Furnishings!

When Prim Perfect magazine invited me to be their Designer of the Month for June, I thought "Oh, goody!" - and then they told me I would be decorating a cabin on the Galaxy Cruise ship. Now, as it turns out, this cabin was quite large, which is good, but I would be limited to 300 prims, which is -- a challenge. As it turned out, it was a good exercise in analyzing how I could lose prims without sacrificing quality. I was not able to use some of my very favorite things, of course -- I did so want to use my leopard skin occasional chairs -- but I used a lot of things from the Low Prim section of the store, and did away with a lot of shadows.

The cabin has low ceilings and dark paneling, so I covered the floors with wood, painted, and wallpapered. :-) And yes, that took some of my precious prims.

Prim Perfect has a contest in which you can win ALL the furnishings (as well as free rent for the cabin for a month). All you need to do is find the prim count on the items shown on p.66 by visiting the stores, and sending in your notecard to Prim Perfect with the totals. Seems pretty simple. Prim Perfect's web version of the magazine can be found here.

Summertime = Partytime!

Invite your friends over and spend the day having a cookout!

GRILLING

Touch the grill to get a menu to rez uncooked burgers or barbecued chicken -- then after a bit, "turn" the meat over by rezzing the cooked versions!

To cook the meat on the grill, touch the cannister to get the turner or tongs (for owner only) -- accept the animation then click on the turner or tongs to "wear" them. You don't have to dig around in inventory for them!

Guests may touch the bag of potato chips for a chip, or the soda or beer can for a drink.

PICNIC TABLE

To eat, touch the picnic table for the menu and choose your food and number of guests! Touch the food to get food or fork and start eating! Rez the ice chest and guests can touch the cans for a soda or beer.

Food Items:

Appetizers -- Chips & Salsa with Margarita or Cheese & Fruit with Wine

Meals -- Barbecued Chicken with Grilled Corn and Tomato Slice, or Cheeseburgergs with Potato Chips.

Dessert -- Cherry Pie or Cookies

Each picnic bench has three "seats", each with a male and female dining animation.