First, the big news of the day. Who won the Tilevera-licious contest??
I'm a pushover for a good story. And there were too many to choose just one. So, OK, I selected two winners; Christa CS for her etymology-spiked comment and Tracy B for giving us a glimpse of her early romance with her husband.
many thanks to all of you for commenting (including the emails).
And the other BIG news for this May 2010 Tile Salon - drum roll - the launch of Tilevera's new super-duper website. It features our collections, but most importantly, it also breaks them down into 16 big LIFESTYLES.
I'm happy. I like it. Even after looking at it for too many months. That talented Uncle Rey has been dedicating a small portion of his life, in between his actual life of rock-n-roll, to the design and construction of our randy-dandy new website.
(click photo to preview)
BUT...the real trick will be if the website is working for all of you. So we're all ears!! Let us know what you think.
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And finally, as promised, the TRADE SHOW coverage from KBIS and Coverings 2010. All my tile friends know that I suffer from a chronic allergy to trade shows - so when I don't manage to get to them- my pals are always most helpful with giving me the highlights. But between their reports and much internet scanning here are the only real highlights i could unfold-
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KBIS 2010
Chicago's KBIS 2010 was reportedly better than last year's- while at the same time still apparently a disappointment. The usual fun studios didn't show up. But thanks to Apartmenttherapy.com, I've got a bit of KBIS tile news.
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APARTMENT THERAPY
Apartmenttherapy.com decided the favored products at this year's Chicago KBIS 2010 was the tile! I was pretty impressed by this, since my tile clan said that tile at this year's event was slim pickings along with all the other K&B goodies. I have found apartmenttherapy.com does a pretty good job of including tile in the blog mix. So click here for the KBIS story and then below for some quick pic's. I'll apologize that there were no manufacturer's credits from the story- but I'm pretty sure I recognize them. How about some suggestions from the crowd?
(stone)
(bamboo)
(cork)
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COVERINGS 2010
Same story going on (or not) at Coverings. In fact, other than the news that Florida Tile threw a fun tile bash, our favorite Tile Envy correspondents- Lena and Juan came back sans tan and photos! So again, I went about my cyber search and came up with the following-
KARIM RASHID
Famous all 'round designer Karim Rashid showed up with his new tile collection of super-modern porcelain, metals and mosaics. Below, a video-
(click photo for video)
I'm not sure what to make of all of that, other than it's fun to see Karim as a new face in our industry- if only because he's soooo different from the norm. We needed some fresh injections of new tile design juju, and one certainly can say that Karim's style is new for tile!
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But that's that for my big trade show report for May. Not much, I know. But it's the state of our industry right now, and the state of our globe, unfortunately. However, like Karim, I think there's a lot of revolution brewing below the surface. I can feel it in my bones! I'm expecting great things just around the bend :)
And since I just saw Sex and the City 2 yesterday- I have to end this funnest bit of tile news from our friends at Heath Ceramics.
The movie...not so great. But the tile... a real show stopper!!