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 http://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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

La Galleria’s Designer of the Month for June is Endora McAndrews, who owns a beautiful Virginia style house in a beach community. She does a lot of entertaining: “I have family all over SL. This house is sort of like an adult play house. We are all busy, but we meet a lot and barbecue a lot and enjoy each other’s company as if we were in real life.”

Endora’s friend and housemate Angelinne Cazalet was helpful in the set up of the furniture in the house, and did the landscaping you see.

While most of the decor is soft, muted colors in traditional, classic style, Endora created flair by skillfully blending touches of Asian, Contemporary, Victorian, and Western. “I decorate for comfort”, Endora says.

The result is a design consistent with with classic style of the house, but with a crisp, contemporary feel — perfect for the warm and welcoming gathering place it is.

I have four kitchens done so far! Here’s the info from the notecard that comes with them:

While the kitchen is great fun by itself, it is designed to be integrated with the Dinner Party and Dinner Party II dining sets, where your guests can sit down to the meals you prepare in the kitchen while they have appetizers at the kitchen bar.

The kitchen has three areas — all copyable — that rez food through a menu, and each of these comes separately and must be placed in the kitchen:

1) The food prepartion island, where you can prepare full meals which include salad, sauce for lasagna (none of that bottled stuff!), and assembling the lasagna, and, when you just want to serve a treat, chocolate chip cookies — and when you are not cooking, a bowl of fruit or a brass pitcher with gerbera daisies.

To rez these, touch the top of the island. To stir, wear the wooden stirring spoon from your invenotyr; to chop, wear the chopping knife. (You may have to adjust your height and/or the spoon and knife in order to stir and chop correctly — or move the bowl or pot.)

2) The oven and range, where you can cook lasagna sauce, lasagna, cookies and cocoa, baked potatos, rolls, french bread — and you can grill steaks. To rez these, touch the BACK WALL of the stove.

3) The bar (attached to the kitchen), where your guests can munch on cheese and crackers while they sip wine, have chips and salsa while they drink Margaritas, have pita and hummos, have a lovely ivory and gold cup of steaming cafe au lait, a beautiful rose-pattern teapot that gives a steaming cup of tea along with a basket of muffins to serve, or serve the cocoa and cookies you have made — and when you are not cooking, a bowl of fruit or a brass pitcher with gerbera daisies. Just touch the bar countertop to rez these.

All of the rezzing items are copyable, so you can take a copy and place them wherever you like, as well as rezzing them.

******

The kitchen is modifiable, but if you change the size of the oven, the island top, or the serving bar top, the food positions will get messed up.

The kitchen comes with optional copy- mod walls, as well as transferble hanging lamp, four stools, a set of wooden spoons that gives a wooden spoon to stir with, a coffee maker that gives a steaming mug of coffee, a potted basil plant, a set of four cannisters, a set of three pasta-filled glass cannisters, a rolling pin, a cutting board, a cookbook, a hanging kitchen utensil rack, three baskets, and wall decor.

The kitchen by itself is 45 prims, not counting the items that rez or the extras listed above.

A new feature of this blog is one I have been planning since before I started it — to showcase how my brilliant and talented designer-customers (even if they only design for themselves) use La Galleria furnishings to create showcase homes.

This month’s designer is Damanta Galaxy, co-owner of Club Erin, the Parkhead Mall, and Gra Go Deo Rentals. Damanta has done a superb job with her beautiful beach home, mixing styles to create drama, and using a sophisticated neutral tone palette with dashes of color.

Damanta has also designed the beautiful wedding chapel and garden overlooking the beach – along with a honeymoon suite — which will be availble soon for weddings!

If you would like your creation to be featured in the blog, send me a couple of pics — you may be chosen Designer of the Month! But I can tell you the competition will be stiff, because there are some very talented people out there. 🙂

X marks the spot — look for an X (like on treasure map) on the floor somewhere! The hunt lasts a week and starts Thursday, May 14.

Good news — I have the food sets for the rectangular tables for 6 in a texture change version! I have boxes of lasagna and steak dinners, chocolate mousse, and strawberry shortcake. I also have breakfast (muffins with tea or coffee) and coffee for for the small round Dinner Party II tables. More to come!