New Country French Paisley Pattern, “Claudette”

Introducing “Claudette”, a soft and distinctively French paisley damask with touches of Shabby Chic. As with all Color Bakery art, we can not only produce custom tiles (glass, ceramic, stone, porcelain), but all the products on our site–from serving trays to glass clocks to high quality tote bags. Claudette would make a wonderful tile border, backsplash or individual decorative tile accent pattern. To order this pattern on any product, just type “Claudette” in the image name field when you load your cart. See all our patterns here. See our online store, here.

Zodiac Floor Mural, Custom Design

Last year, I received a very panicked phone call from a man named Tom Voustas. He had a booming voice and a thick Greek accent. “I want the Zodiac Wheel,” he said, “on a tile floor. I am opening a new diner. I can’t find this anywhere; can you help me? I have looked everywhere and I am about to give up. Can you do this?”

I told him yes, and he made me repeat that word three times because he thought he heard me wrong. A long pause. “I don’t believe it,” he said, but the happiness in his voice told me he did. “I’ve been looking at mural places for four weeks,” he said. “I can’t believe it. Nobody has this, nobody could help me.”

It was not going to be a run-of-the-mill diner, he explained, but a very trendy, upscale restaurant that happened to be a diner. The decor was going to be much more elegant than the usual fare; sorta like the Terminal Diner (which may or may not still be on Eleventh Avenue in Chelsea in Manhattan), a really funky art deco 24-hour indoor and outdoor diner. (One of my husband’s favorite haunts when we first got married.)

I designed a Zodiac Wheel for Tom, and we had it printed on 12″ square porcelain tile. The mural measures five feet in diameter. Since it was a circle, it had to be carefully cut to install on the floor, and it also had to be tempered to handle foot traffic. Once the design was approved, we ordered special tile for him and warned him that he had to go to a professional porcelain cutter, or he risked ruining the tiles.

I just got an email this morning from a photographer, sent from Tom, with the below photo attached. As you can see from the photo, they did a fabulous job installing the floor tile mural. “You come to American Dream diner for ten free meals!” Tom told me not too long ago. I think my husband and I might take him up on it. I haven’t had a decent gyro since I left New York City eleven years ago.

Custom Tile Patterns, Tile Patterns and More Tile Patterns

Yes, we have tile patterns. We have the most diversified and largest collection of beautiful, original art tile patterns anywhere. We have art nouveau tile patterns. We have grunge tile patterns. We have floral tile patterns. We have classic tile patterns. We have funky tile patterns. We have geometric tile patterns. We have abstract tile patterns. We have deco tile patterns. We have vintage tile patterns. We have fabric pastiche tile patterns. In fact, there isn’t a genre we don’t have. And if we don’t have what the customer wants, we can make it from scratch.

Know what else we can do that’s really cool? Let’s say you have a fabric design in your living room, a matching or coordinating pattern you’re using for bed or table linens, couch pillows and/or curtains. You send me a swatch of your pattern, and I can make you a tile mural, backsplash or tile border to match your pattern. I can even make the pattern seamless. I am confident that no other tile company can do that. Or, we can create a pattern for our customers from scratch, according to their tastes. Please remember, we can take any image on Color Bakery and print it on any product. See all our patterns here. See our online store, here.

Ceramic Tile Mural Serving Tray, Country French Pattern

One of the most wonderful things about making custom art for a living is creating something for my customers that they have looked all over for, but have not had success in finding.

A longtime client called a couple of weeks ago and told me she wanted a country French pattern, with green and blue, and a vintage feel. She wanted a personal serving tray that would go with her bedroom decor. She told me she wanted a lighthearted pattern with a vintage French feel, in blues and greens. She said she had looked all over for a tray with this kind of artwork, and couldn’t find anything she liked..so she decided to have me design it for her.

I created this art piece for her (see photo below) and she said, “that’s it!” She was so happy she sent me roses. Of course she didn’t have to do that, but the fact that I gave her exactly what she had been envisioning was so satisfying to me. Nothing like it in the world. (It also gave me a good reason to razz my husband, as he hasn’t sent me a dozen roses since the year 2000). I loved the pattern so much I made it available on Color Bakery, and it can be ordered on all our products—because, as you know, we make everything custom at the request of our customers. But it’s now part of the art lineup, in our Pattern Gallery. It’s called, “Viva La France.”

The photo below is the pattern in tile mural format in an Alderwood Personal Serving Tray. It consists of two six inch ceramic satin matte tiles adhered to the tray by hand. If you would like to find out more or purchase, please click here or click on the photo.

Custom Glass Art Clocks

One of my personal favorites from Color Bakery (and one of our most popular sellers) is our custom made 12″ round glass clocks. The glass is smooth (it used to be textured but is now smooth glass) and receives ink just as beautifully as our glass tiles. We can customize both the artwork and clock design with the art of your choosing. It has mounting hardware on the back but I especially love this clock on our wrought iron clock stand–it looks beautiful on a desktop or table. Shown in photo: two images from our Chimera Gallery (left, “Self Absorbed”, middle, “Sundial”) and the image on the right is called “Batik and Lace” and is from our Pattern Gallery. For purchasing info, please click here or click the photo

Vintage Christmas Card, Color Bakery’s 2008 personal card

Howdy all,

I thought I would share our 2008 Christmas or Holiday card art design that we are sending out to friends and family this year. I felt like doing a vintage style card. I took the vintage photograph of the girl and gave her a Santa hat and put her in a Christmas snow setting, giving it a painterly look.

I usually have quick printing projects like this one done at any online printer, like Vistaprint. These cards were designed for 5″ x 7″.

If you would like to purchase the high resolution, printing-ready art for this card (via immediate download) and making your own cards or using it for any art project you like, you may do so by clicking here or clicking the graphic.

Don’t forget to check out Vintage Art Download for gorgeous vintage images by the immediate download.

Vintage Girl Christmas Card

Custom Holiday Gift Creating: African Batik Placemats

Every year, I try to come up with new gift ideas for my personal gift list–my friends and family. For example, this year I am doing a set of glass Alphonse Mucha coasters, among other things. It’s neat that I have Mucha’s work in high resolution for fine art printing. (Mucha, along with many other fine artists, is available on my Vintage Art Download site where we have high resolution jpgs available for artists, printers, collectors, altered artists, scrapbookers, decoupagers, etc).

click image for more Mucha (Alphonse Mucha, "Danse")

I usually design the art from scratch, keeping decor and taste in mind. One dear friend started out initially as a Color Bakery client, and now she is more a part of the family. Glen and I adore her; she’s got a heart as big as the sky. I have designed many custom art glass murals for her stunning Los Angeles townhouse, and whenever she has a very special gift that she wants to give to someone close to her, she calls me and we talk about it until I see something in my head and start to design. She’ll give me a basic overview of the person’s taste, along with her ideas, and after that I get a free hand so I can come up with something unique, beautiful and consonant with the recipient’s tastes.

This dear woman’s home is very ethnic, very native African, in feel. The basic color scheme is golds, deep reds, creams, rich sienna browns. One wall displays over one hundred native African masks, imported from a special dealer who goes to Africa to select special masks for her. One mask is about ten feet tall and engulfs a wall unto itself. (They had lots of fun hanging it; it was so heavy it destroyed the wall and she had to have it reconstructed!) There is strong influx of Asian art as well, in the form of Japanese calligraphy scrolls on rice paper, and wooden interpretations of Buddah. It’s a very rich and vibrant feel as far as color and decor.

When I showed her the Christmas Patchwork Placemats I recently designed for Color Bakery, she really loved them, so I thought I would take a similar pastiche patchwork style and use batik fabric to make her a piece of art we could use to make a set of custom designed placemats for her table. I might even do different square crops of this image and print it on glass for her so she could arrange them in a wall display if she likes.

Here is a small jpg of the placemat design. The end result will not be real batik of course, as the placemats are a lined cotton canvas blend, but it will certainly look just like it because the artwork is made from many high resolution (2400 dpi) batik scans. If you would like to purchase this item, click here. Or click the image below.

Batik Placemat Art