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 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."
