Choosing a countertop and the endless choices of materials has been daunting.   We were advised by experts to use the same material throughout the entire kitchen to keep cohesiveness.  Well… we ignored the experts.

We decided to use a natural material for the counters.  We started searching the stone yards throughout the Bay Area looking for the perfect piece that fits in with our design.  A designer we consulted with recommended that we use marble in the kitchen.  It’s a classic material that fits in with everything from Victorian homes, to the craftsmen homes, to the mid-century-modern homes,  But, it’s not a popular choice with contractors and stone fabricators.  They advise against using it due to the fact that it’s a porous material that can stain and etch.  We love the look, and a large number of European kitchens use it without a second thought, so we decided to go with marble.

We wanted a piece of marble with a clean look, not too much veining, lots of white, and a slab that was three centimeters thick.  Two centimeters seems to be the most popular choice for people, therefore, it being the most plentiful.  After months of searching, we found the perfect piece to go into the main part of the kitchen.

As for the other areas of the kitchen:  The plans are to put a stainless steel countertop to the left of the stove that will take the brunt of the work load of a busy kitchen.  The bar top that is raised above the stove, and has a birds-eye view of the action going on in the kitchen, will be made by our cabinet maker with a wood that matches the floors (hopefully, we’re still looking for the floors).

Marble keeps a consistent cool temperature that a chef loves.    This is a valuable asset for a kitchen enabling you to cool things down in a hurry.

Snail hides from march of history

The snails were found in a balustrade imported from Rome

A colony of Mediterranean snails has been found at the UK's Cliveden House, where they have lived in marble-wrapped secrecy for a century.

The snails, never found before in the UK, apparently came from Italy in a balustrade bought by a Lord Astor, a former owner of the mansion.

There are thought to be several hundred of the 11mm-long snails at Cliveden.

John Profumo met model Christine Keeler at the Buckinghamshire house in 1961, which led to a political scandal.

Footballer Steven Gerrard married at the National Trust property last year.

Amidst all this activity - and the visits down the years of luminaries as important as Winston Churchill, George Bernard Shaw and Charlie Chaplin - the Papillifera papillaris snail has been a reclusive guest.

What they're doing, what they're eating, we don't rightly know Matthew Oates

"They were found by a specialist volunteer who helps us clean the statuary in Cliveden," said the Trust's nature conservation adviser Mathew Oates.

"He went to a talk at the local archaeological society given by a snail specialist, mentioned his find, and it turned out he'd spotted the colony which had almost certainly been there since 1896," he told BBC News.

Common around the Mediterranean, this is believed to be the UK's only sighting of the species.

School for scandal

It was in 1896 that Cliveden took delivery of a travertine marble balustrade that now runs for about 100 metres along the top of the house's immaculately coiffured lawns.

"It was purchased and brought over from Rome by the first Viscount Astor," said John Bignell, visitor services manager at the property.

"He'd been an ambassador in Rome and was a great collector. The Villa Borghese in Rome, which he bought it from, now has a copy."

When the snails climbed on board is not known, although the balustrade itself dates from about 1816.

At Cliveden, they have lived in crevices in the marble and at the bottom of the balustrade.

"What they're doing, what they're eating, we don't rightly know, although it's likely they're feeding on lichen or algae growing on the marble," said Mr Oates.

"But what's important is they've also been found in two, possibly three other places at Cliveden, so all our eggs are not in one basket from a conservation point of view."

Cliveden's past includes the pool party where John Profumo met Christine Keeler

Over the years, the snails would have had the chance to witness a number of seminal moments in UK politics.

Nancy Astor, wife of the second viscount, was the first woman MP to take her seat.

In the 1930s, ministers, prime ministers and other dignitaries came so often to mull the issues of the day that the circle of habitues gained the sobriquet of the "Cliveden Set".

But the most notorious event was undoubtedly the meeting of Profumo and Keeler in 1961. The 18-year-old model and call-girl was having an affair with a Soviet military attache; and when she later started an affair with the cabinet minister, and he then lied to parliament about it, his fall was a matter of time.

Still owned by the National Trust, the house itself is used as a hotel. Its most famous recent visitor was probably Liverpool star Steven Gerrard who tied the knot there in June 2007, though whether he or his guests spotted the odd Papillifera papillaris is not on record.

Mosaic artist - filippo bandini - ari kokomosaico

Mosaic detail - filippo bandini - ari kokomosaico

Artificerie Almagià
Ravenna
Filippo Bandini
"a Ravenna la gente copia il mosaico"

Mosaic - movimento no.4 - ari kokomosaico

Mosaic detail - movimento no.4 - ari kokomosaico

Artificerie Almagià
Ravenna
Aniko Ferreira Da Silva
Giuseppe Donnaloia
"Movimento n° 4"

Mosaic Artist - Luca Barberini - ari kokomosaico

Mosaic Detail - luca barberini - ari kokomosaico

Artificerie Almagià
Ravenna
Luca Barberini
"Phone"

Mosaic artist - yukiko nagai - ari kokomosaico

Mosaic detail - yukiko nagai - ari kokomosaico

Artificerie Almagià
Ravenna
senza titolo
Yukiko Nagai

Mosaic Artist - Elisa Simoni - ari kokomosaico

Mosaic Detail - Elisa Simoni - ari kokomosaico

Artificerie Almagià
Ravenna
Elisa Simoni

Mosaic artist - isabelle seker tulay - ari kokomosaico

Mosaic detail - isabelle seker tulay - ari kokomosaico

Mosaic artist - isabelle seker tulay - ari kokomosaico

Mosaic detail - isabelle seker tulay - ari kokomosaico

Artificerie Almagià
Ravenna
Isabelle Seker Tulay
senza titolo

Mosaic artist - francesca gismondi - ari kokomosaico

Mosaic detail - francesca gismondi - ari kokomosaico

Artificerie Almagià
Ravenna
Francesca Gismondi
"Scudo"

Mosaic artist - takako hirai - ari kokomosaico

Mosaic detail - takako hirai - ari kokomosaico

Artificerie Almagià
Ravenna
Takako Hirai
"Cercami"

Mosaic Artist - arianna gallo - ari kokomosaico

Mosaic detail - arianna gallo - ari kokomosaico

Artificerie Almagià
Ravenna
Arianna Gallo
"Lens"

Mosaic artist - arianna gallo - ari kokomosaico

Mosaic detail - arianna gallo - ari kokomosaico

Artificerie Almagià
Ravenna
Arianna Gallo
"Su"

Tags: mosaic, art, mosaico, contemporary, mosaic artist, arianna gallo, takako hirai, francesca gismondi, isabelle seker tulay, elisa simoni, yukiko nagai, luca barberini, aniko ferreira da silva, guiseppe donnaloia, fillippo bandini, valeria ercolani

"When the going gets tough, guerillas make sizeable bank deposits."
– Jay Conrad Levinson.

Guerilla Marketing During Tough Times

He will be speaking in Tampa on September 3, 2008. Don't miss it!

Go to: http://www.TampaInvestmentProperty4u.com

He has sold over 14 million books as well as created the greatest marketing campaigns in Modern History: The Marlboro Man, All State "you're in good hands", the Pillsbury Dough Boy, and Sears Die Hard Battery. But he's most proud of his accomplishment with helping small business owners revolutionize
their marketing and jump-start their business when all hope is gone….

Make sure you purchase your tickets to see the Godfather of Guerilla Marketing live in the flesh before he's gone like the other God Father!!!! His mind is a national treasure and it's up to you to ask the questions that will help you and your business get to the next level!!!

Go to: http://www.TampaInvestmentProperty4u.com for tickets

P.S. This page has been written by the
best copyrighter in the business once you
enter you will be purchasing tickets to
join us and enjoy The Godfathers presentation….

P.S.S. There is no selling at this event --
only learning. We invested a 5-figure
sum to bring in Mr. Levinson for our collective benefit!!!!

http://www.TampaInvestmentProperty4u.com

Take an illustrated tour to the Marble road in Laas cause it has strong sense of cyberpunk.

PRESENTATION, NOTRE ENGAGEMENT, QUI SONT NOS CLIENTS, EMBALLAGES DES ARTICLES

• Sourcing for living est établi depuis 1999
• Bureau de direction Français, basé a Bali - Indonésie
• Equipes travaillant sur tout le territoire Indonésien
• 4 langues parlées (Français, Anglais, Espagnol et Indonésien)
• Livraisons partout dans le monde

........ >>>

Just thought I would let you know,

I have a new post up at Watch me create.

(this ONE OF A KINDER murrini marble is at my e-bay...only one bid!)

Because sculpture involves the use of materials that can be molded or modulated, it is considered one of the plastic art. The majority of public art is sculpture. Many sculpture together in a garden may be referred to as a sculpture garden.

I DON'T care what anyone says about the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. I thought it was amazing. Okay, the segment where the baseball-capped performers formed a flapping dove was a little too camembert for me. But that phenomenal opening act with the drummers - how can anyone not get goosebumps?

So I set out to make a cake to celebrate the Olympics. For even to a non-sports fan like me, the Olympics is a very special time. I'd watch pretty much any event on TV. During these two weeks, I am not a cynic. I totally buy the whole notion that sports promotes world peace, harmony and all that Hallmark stuff. And I'd tear every time they play the national anthem of whichever country just won gold. My mum is the same. The only sports she's ever interested in is the obsessive cleaning of my kitchen countertop. But come Olympics season, she's all spread out across my sofa and watching equestrian.

I was thinking about what to make for my Olympic cake and, no, I'm not making five cupcakes with the five Olympic rings on top. I am a woman of subtlety, folks. I decided on Tish Boyle's Orange And Cream Cake because it required several back-breaking steps - making the genoise cake layers, the orange sugar syrup, the orange mousse, and lots of grating of orange zest. Since it calls for so much time and hard work, I'd qualify it as my "marathon cake".

But to cut a long story short, the cake was a disaster that scaled to, well, Olympic heights. It started with me, with one eye fixated on women's synchronised diving on TV, adding twice the amount of sugar to the mousse. Then, I forgot that my 9-inch loose-bottom cake tin was not water-tight, so when the cake and mousse were placed in it before chilling, the mousse leaked.

I don't even wanna talk about how I tried to rescue it. (Well, okay. I tried taking out the cake layers - all mushy and soaked in mousse - with my bare hands, hoping to move them to another tin. Needless to say, they broke. What was I thinking.)

I was cranky for the rest of the day ("Hi, I'm Pau Lin,  and I'm a cakeholic..."). To make myself feel better, I made another cake the following day. This time, a simpler-to-achieve marble cake, also from Tish Boyle's The Cake Book. This one turned out beautifully - so tender and with a fabulous crumb. It's perfect as it is, but I drizzled over some chocolate glaze to satisfy my chocoholic readers out there (Hello, Zann and Daphnee!). The things a blogger has to do to get hits.

Still, I was a bit miffed that this cake didn't look or feel very Olympian. But that's until
I sliced it up for the photoshoot and saw the cross-section. Doesn't it look like a very lyrical tree in a very Chinese painting? (Shut up, those of you who say "Looks like a kidney, what.") It's poetry in confection, I tell you.

Go, Beijing!

Take me along with you
Inside your pocket
My body against your warmth
Rolling rolling rolling...

Or toss me away
Into the drain
I will roll with debris and water
Along along along...

Bobbing up and down
Traversing putrid rivers
Your tired face I shall be
Kissing kissing kissing...

Until I find the sea again
Ride the undulating waves
Then into the bottomless ocean sink
Deep deep deep...

There I will kiss you again
Listen to the water engulf me
Enwrapped in your soft breathing
Sigh sigh sigh...

I am nothing great
Just a small blue thing.

This is one of our many lilies that we grow.  We have hundreds. This flower is named "Lillium Roths Hornii" , some call these Black heart" (because the center is black).

Lily seeds take three years to go from Lily seed, to bulb-bet to FULL BLOWN BIG BULB WITH A BLOOM. Or two!

This is our most proud seedling! The seeds were collected years ago from the North American lily society bead exchange. (My husband and I joined the society when we got into gardening.)

Check out the texture of the petals!! This is why I am showing it here. You do not see this often. All lily petals look different. (From plant to plant) The petals from all the different lilies we grow are what inspired me to make lily petal murrinies. (You can see more of those at my eBay auctions, or in my shop at Etsy.)

lily flowers smell strong too. Just this one flower in my office creates a wonderful aroma.

That wet looking 'black star' area just looks like that. It is dry of water. 

The pollen makes a great paint medium from a lily. This lily has a burnt Seana color, and the pollen flakes into a dry compound material.  We have lilies with orange, yellow ochre and brown pollen.  If paint was not so easily accessible, I would be mixing my own from Lily pollen. (If I was still painting like I used to. Which, I have been thinking of getting back into painting with paint, and wax.)

 Drawing inspiration from these flowers really is effortless. So many color combinations. So many different directions the petals can lay.

When I create with the lily petals I do not necessarily try to make an exact replica of the actual flower. In my eyes that is being done just Fine by MANY Artists. I am exploring a definite floral reference, with a bit of abstraction going on. In this marble picture here, the petals are in groups of 4, and you would never see one lily bloom with two different petals; or even eight petals. Nope! Six petals is the standard.

Instead of stamen and pollen, we have Italian millefiori imploded (exploded) into the center. 

Celebrating inspiration!

(More murrini inspiration will be shared here in the near future. LARGE murrinies I am making, along with the murrini I have been trading! Wait until you see the Borosilicate glass murrini I got! Little glass slices of art!)

Enjoy!

We at Virginia Fair studios can create just about any finish on any wall to tie in with the clients needs and ideas... Over 20 years experience in the field-ranging from faux painting and glaze, design plaster, aging, antiquing, sponging, including furniture, molding, cabinets, etc.

A recent art installation we completed, for a private residance, was a life size plaster relief of a buffalo designed to complement a life size wood carved indian!

This is just one example of what can be done with design plaster. When we say design plaster , we are talking about specialty plasters that are used as decorative finishes, as apposed to wall plaster that is used over dry wall that is then painted or wall papered, etc.  One example of design plaster is called Venetian plaster. This is a mixture composed of marble and other aggregates such as limestone, etc. The main ingrediant being marble dust. What this does is give the plaster a wonderful glow and richness, and authenticity-and once smoothed onto a wall and buffed, creates a rich surface that brings forth the charactor of the marble. It feels and looks like marble, and is actually cool to the touch. The plaster can easily be tinted any color as well.

There are several grades of this design plaster, ranging from very fine, to the more course mixture that can be used to create an old world raised texture. These lime based marble plasters are combined with natural oxides and pigments to give a wide range of colors. Over this can be applied glazes and/or washes to enhance the effect, adding to the look and feel of the wall(s).

Although some Venetian Plasters are polished or “burnished” with a sheen-techniques have been developed to give a variety of effects  ranging from a suede, marble, or stone "feel" and look. It is through the artisan’s imagination and the refinement of technique that  can give a room the look and feel of Old World, Contemporary, Tuscan, Traditional , etc.

www.virginiafairstudios.com

The crafts you see here in this blog are stuff we make during our lunch break. We were initially thrilled with the idea of crafting during lunch hour cos it would mean lesser intake. But boy are we wrong! I mean who could resist munching, talking (ok. more like bitching) and crafting at same time.  

Below is an idea of what we have done. Hopefully we'll have more to show...

It sounded fun so I decided to play along too. I googled 'Diane' follwed by 'needs' and these are 12 of the 14,700,000 results I got.

1. Diane needs a pigfoot and a bottle of beer...
2. Diane needs someone claiming to be a long lost relative....
3. Diane needs to reconcile both sides of herself...
4. Diane needs to wake up...
5. Diane needs a loan from her father...
6. Diane needs help!
7. (what) Diane needs is a good affair...
8. (what) Diane needs is only moist, well drained organic soil...
9. Diane needs to be more sexy and more out there...
10. Diane needs bossing...
11. Diane needs to eat more...
12. Diane needs is a f*%*&*g good shower.

Well, what can I say? Some are spookily truer than others - but I'm not telling you which ones!

I'm going to tag the following blogging friends to have a go - but only if you'd like to.

Teresa - Amy - Jenny - Sue - Colin - Kylee - Paul - writinggb - Scratchbags - 70steen - Astrid - Drowsey Monkey - Fracas - Lady Banana - Peteej and anyone else who thinks this might be a fun thing to do....help yourself.

Now guess what?

I made a book! The weather has been very iffy again so I took the opportunity to use some of the lovely paper I have hanging around. I think I am back in the groove...

Now I know I promised not to bang on about Italy again but that was before I decided to sort out a cupboard (looking for #1 son's passport) and came across some old photographs from 1999.  In fact, the date stamped on these photographs is 09.09.99. and as we are approaching 08.08.08 and I have just paid the man who cuts my lawn £108 on 01.08.08  (I am coming over all numerological. Is there such a word?) Anyway, it also happens the photographs were of a magical trip to - you've guessed it - Italy! Portofino, Carrara and Siena, to be precise. So for what I promise will be the last time I mention Italy for AGES, here are some highlights of the trip.

First Portofino, a picture postcard perfect village in Liguria, on the Northern coast of Italy. My ex and I drove there for a wedding anniversary - 23rd I think...

We left Portofino and drove to Carrara to meet up with a friend, Stephen Cox, who is a sculptor. He wanted to show us the marble quarry where he buys the marble for some of his work. It was one of the most memorable days of my life - for all sorts of reasons.

You can see Carrara as you drive along the motorway that follows the coast in Northern Italy. The mountains behind the town look as if they are snow covered but in fact, it is the white marble that the area is famous for, gradually being revealed by the quarrying which has been going on since Roman times. In fact, the Pantheon and Trajan's column, in Rome are made of it. This is my favourite photograph of the Pantheon.

When we reached Carrara, we drove to the place where Stephen buys his marble from. It's a huge yard with an enormous machine like a band saw which saws the huge marble chunks into appropriate sizes.

The owner of the place then drove us in a Land Rover into the mountains to see where the marble originated. We drove up to the edge of town and then suddenly started to drive up a rough, gravelly track, barely wider than the Land Rover. This is the road we were driving up.

Whenever, we got to the end of a section, we had to do a three point turn to get round the corner. The back of the car was hanging over a precipice as we got higher and higher. If you enlarge this photograph, you can see cars parked at the bottom - see how tiny they are! After a terrifying journey, we arrived at the quarry and we were astonished to see the scale of the operation up there. HUGE earthmovers and dumper trucks (which had obviously done the same journey at some point - in fact the trucks do it several times a day - loaded with giant blocks of marble) were cutting away at the mountain face, carving enormous cubes of the stone.

Here are some shots of the process.

After we left Carrara, we drove to Siena, where Stephen had an exhibition in the square in front of the Duomo (cathedral) called 'Interior Spaces'. He had placed 4 huge hollow marble boxes which resembled sarcophagi in the piazza. It was wonderful to see people interacting with them - peering through openings, looking at the light shining through them or even just using them as somewhere to sit and enjoy the sunshine.

We spent a few days in Siena which, as I have already mentioned in my previous post, is a beautiful city. It is famous for a horse race held there twice a year called the 'Palio'. It is hotly contested by 10 of the 17 'contradas' or districts of Siena. Each contrada is named after an animal or a symbol and has it's own flag, colours, uniform and traditions. The race dates dates back to medieval times and during the year each contrada parades in the streets playing music and waving their flags to drum up support. I saw the 'Aquila' (Eagle) contrada parading through the streets.

Here is a video I found on YouTube of a Palio race. It is my ambition to see one but perhaps not in the middle of this crowd - on one of the balconies overlooking the Campo would be my choice!

This has been rather a long post but I had to get it all in - promise I shall move on from Italy now.

At least for a time anyway.....arrivederci!

A common misconception about marble is that because it's a stone it's highly durable.  Unfortunately this is not necessarily true.  Marble is generally considered a soft stone.  It scratches easily and is very porous and so it can stain easily if it is not properly sealed. (The lighter the color the softer the stone.)  So if you have a high gloss marble tile in your entry or kitchen it won't take long before the scratches and stains begin to show.  What can be done when that happens?

We get many calls from people asking us to "put the polish back" on their marble.  What they don't realize is if they have a true glossy marble, the shine they see is not a coating put on top of the stone but the stone itself.  When you damage the surface you are damaging the stone.   The high shine is accomplished by diamond sanding with finer and finer grits and then a final polish with special products to create that high gloss.  The finished product is a highly polished marble- not a dull marble with a coating on top.  Worn, scratched and dull marble can be refinished in this way to restore its original beauty and shine.

Some manufacturers do put a coating on dull marble to give it that high gloss.  This is essentially cheating.  It is much easier (and cheaper) to slap a coating on marble than to take the time and carefully polish it.  Coatings on marble can be dangerous.  Marble needs to breathe.  Some coatings prevent this from occurring and moisture trapped beneath the surface can cause spalling; cracking, flaking, and popping.  Other coatings can discolor.  In addition, by applying a coating to your marble you will have to strip and refinish the coating as it gets scratched, dulled, and discolored- which is the same way you would care for a vinyl floor.  Most people buy stone for a reason; they want a natural stone surface, not a wash and wax surface.  We do not recommend putting any kind of coating on most marble, travertine, or limestone.

For more infomation about marble polishing in Longmeadow MA you can call visit www.likenewfloors.com.