We continue Rerun week with a visit to a unique “castle” in Miami, Florida.

TITLE – Vizcaya Museum and Gardens

ORIGINAL POST DATE – June 30, 2009

WHY I LOVE IT SO – Vizcaya is a place that has been special to me since childhood. I grew up in Miami, Florida and frequently visited the “Hearst Castle of the East”. The residence is graced with gorgeous decorative painting and also features several beautiful antique mirrors, two great loves of mine. In the post, there are several images of Vizcaya’s interiors as well as the awe-inspiring gardens. We even did a follow-up entitled Another Trip to Vizcaya, which featured more images and information. I hope you enjoy both.

SOME IMAGES FROM THE POSTS -

The Music Room in Vizcaya. Photography by Bill Sumner.

Just a wee place to find shade in the gardens...

Cher’s newest design project is featured in the July 2010 issue of Architectural Digest. I do like the neutral palette but what I am really loving is the creative use of patinated mirrors. See?

Photography by Tim Street-Porter

The serene home is designed by Martyn Lawrence-Bullard. She asked him to put together “something ethnic, spicy and romantic”. Be still my heart, it happened. Until tomorrow!

Today, I’m just going to post two goings-on with our company, Garay Artisans. I have been experimenting the last few weeks to see which subjects you, dear Reader, respond to and like best. Let me know if you would like to see more of a particular subject matter. Allrighty, then — on to Shades of Garay:

1) Last night, the sibs and I were on the Artistically Speaking show with co-hosts Lyna Farkas and Rebecca Parsons. In case you missed it, you can download the interview on their main site or on our specific page. It was tremendous fun doing the interview with my siblings, Jason and Suzy — and I have to say Lyna and Rebecca have a very nice, organized process. Kudos to them for a great weekly show!

2) Back in March, we won a national award in the commercial division: First Place in the Top Job Awards from American Painting Contractor. We’ve been waiting for the actual issue to arrive to announce it on Fauxology and we finally received it recently. To read the article, you can click on the PDF or read the profile online. I would recommend using any web browser except Internet Explorer to read the online profile, it gets a bit wonky. Some of the pics from the winning project are below, but you can also a few behind the scenes photos in the Asheville Pics!!! Fauxology post.

Hope you have a wonderful start to the week. Tomorrow, I’m featuring an artist whose work is called “magical realism”. I think you’ll like it…

Ahhh, New Year = New Outlook!? When you hear the words “Antique Mirror” you think a beautifully aged looking glass — perhaps in a French chateau, perhaps in panels in an upscale hotel lobby.? We LOVE those mirrors but also look forward to all the new patinas and designs you can do as well.? This month, we premiere our Mirror of the Month: Mod Chic.? It is not an antiqued miror per se, but it features one of many retro-forward designs available and can be done in any coloration and almost any size. Mmmm, now we’re talking!

Our studio produces creates these patinas and many more to ship world-wide.? They can be cleaned and installed like a regular mirror and best of all, add a bit of visual oomph.? What could be better?? Please be sure to check out the rest of our gallery as well. We have a special newsletter for the Design trade and if you are interested in receiving it, please fill out our Contact Us form, send a Tweet to @Fauxology or simply e-mail a request to Info@GarayArtisans.com — we look forward to hearing from you!

By now, you’ve seen the Garay Artisans HD Boutique booth.? While that took a lot of teamwork, there were some marketing efforts behind the scenes also centered around our Alice’s Journey Through the Looking Glass theme.

When we do trade shows, we make a point to target special design firms that we’d like to have visit our booth.? But, how to do that?? I mean, designers are literally bombarded daily with all manner of trades, including the competition.? Why should they be concerned with our company?? The way we try to stand out is to send invites.? But not just any invites — no, no.? We can’t leave well enough alone!

The packages we sent were small white rabbits with invitations nestled within the box.? They were either hand-delivered or carefully shipped.? The purpose of the white rabbit?? Well, to follow it to our booth, of course!? We made beautiful antique mirror coasters as Thank You! gifts to the designers who were kind enough to come by and introduce themselves after receiving our invite.? Here’s the pics of the whole shebang:

So, here’s the process. 1) Identify the firms you’d like to work with — ten or so should be good.?? 2) Send them a Very Special Invite to a presentation or a trade show you are exhibiting at.? 3) At the conference, have a special gift for them as a Thank You! for taking the time to come see you.? 4) Follow up with them — chances are that if you spend a good amount of time putting together a beautiful presentation, you will spend a good amount of time putting together a beautiful space for their client.

While at the show, we had to give away business cards.? We did do our usual attachment of finish samples, but we also added a tiny bottle with a “Drink Me” tag attached.? (It made everyone giggle.)? The Drink Me tag had a raffle number printed on it — at the end of the show, we put up two numbers on our website’s home page and these two individuals won two handmade framed antique mirrors.? So, all those who took away business cards were really enticed to visit our company website to see if they won.? That’s what I call a Win-Win.? Here’s the pic:

By the way, we bought those cute little bottles from Maria Dellos at Maria’s Art Creations.? I have to mention her because she was so helpful and went above and beyond to help find us the perfect tiny bottles — please visit her cute site.? BIG thanks also go to Karen Donnelly (our website guru) for her immense creativity and guidance, Skype calls at 3 am and immeasurable help in putting it all together.? Hope you’ve enjoyed these ideas!? We’ll talk soon…

Garay Artisans took a booth again at the HD Boutique Show this past September. HD Boutique is a conference for interior designers in the hospitality industry. It’s a terrific show for those of us heavily involved in the commercial side of the decorative arts. I knew that on top of our faux finishing portfolio, we were going to strongly promote our antique ornamental mirror services so it was imperative that we pick a theme. It came down to Snow White (“Mirror, Mirror on the Walls” — actually I was going to call it Mirror Mirror & the Walls or “Brewing Up Magical Finishes That Will Leave Your Clients Enchanted”) or Alice in Wonderland (“Journey Through the Looking Glass”). The team took a vote and Alice it was.

The drawing above, representing our back wall, started the whole shebang. It was drawn up by my brother Jason and fellow artisan, Monica Zeuli, while at a bar enjoying live music. (Seriously. They actually called me, too. Excitedly. That’s commitment, folks.) Then it was taken by our web girl, Karen Donnelly, and drawn out graphically (below). We now had a visual to use as a jumping off point.

We decided that we were going to build the back panel and cut out the “frames” for the live antique mirrors to go up against. We also ordered the lettering from Modello and bought checkerboard flooring instead of having regular carpet. The purchases continued with shelving and we luckily had furniture loaned to us by Morris & Kalm, a staging company we work with. (While touring their super-large storage facility, we came across a White Rabbit figurine. Kismet.) Here’s some during pics with Jason & Monica.

Since we’ve done many trade shows and have learned never to leave anything to chance, we did a run-through and set up the entire booth in part of our warehouse space within a taped out 10′ x 10′ space. I highly suggest you do this if setting up for a conference — it outlined many of the things we needed to fix and be prepared for. We then took it all apart and loaded our van. Here’s a pic while we were setting it up.

Here’s some pics of us before the show. That’s my hubby, Chris, putting up the brackets for the computer screens that would be showing a slideshow of our work. They were going on both ends of the booth. It did take a village putting this together. A fun part? Melanie Royals had the Modello Designs booth right across the aisle from us!

Below, the final shots of our space. Are you surprised to see Alice there? Actually, that’s Karen, our webgirl, and since her middle name is Alicia, that’s what her badge said. She was pitch-perfect — and I can’t tell you how much of a popular draw she was. Monica and I went dressed as the Tweedle Divas. We both had the same outfit on during the show — striped top, black pants, colored scarf.

It was two-day show and it took weeks to prepare for — but we can count it as a definite success. I hope this inspires you to dream up your own trade show booth! We do have a Part Two coming next week with some of the marketing stuff we did beforehand to help ensure success. I think you’ll like it…

It’s been a while since I teased you with this post. We finally had some time to photograph the antique damask mirror we did for the wonderful Zou Zou Boutique. Wendy Ricci, the owner, designed the shop herself and I think she added some beautiful elements — from the fabrics to the distressed tin panels to the lighting fixtures. It’s a very bohemian, eclectic and completely fashionable shop. Here are some pics:

Our Mirror!

A few shots of the interior (you can see our mirror reflected in the right pic)…

Love the mix of fabrics and textures…and how fun is that dressing room on the left?

I seriously need these pretty racks in my home…ok, the clothes can come, too…

A few more views of our mirror (the left one taken before the shop opened)…

Some of the yumminess in the shop: distressed frames and light fixtures with whimsical birds…

The pics below are exterior shots (on an overcast day, sorry). The fountain is just outside Zou Zou’s front door!? It took a while to get two shots with no one in the picture.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the Zou Zou Boutique tour and the mirror! Please check out Zou Zou’s site — you’ll see more info on their beautiful first location (the above is the second and hasn’t made their site yet). If you are ever in the Orlando area, I hope you have a few moments to step in. Have a great weekend!